A diet rich in flavonoids of coca, a natural substance present in cocoa seeds, helps stop the cognitive impairment caused by aging, according to a study published in Nature Neuroscience, an English magazine.
Aging usually comes with a difficulty in learning and remembering some names and places. This slow deterioration of memory starts in the adult phase, but is not clearly perceived before the 50´s or 60´s.
To study the impact of the cocoa flavonoids, investigators of the University of Columbia (United States) tested 37 volunteers between the ages of 50 and 69.
The volunteers were distributed into two groups; both received daily drinks with a dose of flavonoids. The first received a strong dose of 900mg, while the second group received a soft dose of 10 mg.
The drinks were prepared by an American chocolate producer, that has an special technique to extract the flavonoids and has partially financed the investigation.
At the end of the test a slight increment in the blood volume that goes through the hippocampus was noted in the first group. They also demonstrated better memorization aptitudes that those in the second group.
Scott Small, the author of the study, stated that “by the end of the three months, a volunteer that had a rally damaged memory recuperated a memory of a 30 or 40 year old.”
Small also said that it can´t be concluded that we have to eat more chocolate, since the “quantity of flavonoids in chocolate is minimal, compared to the one the volunteers consumed during the study.