Hot Cocoa Promotes Brain Health

Blood flow in the brain affects thinking and memory, and different areas of the brain have different energy requirements and blood flow to complete their tasks – an effect known as neurovascular coupling.  Farzaneh A. Sorond, from Harvard Medical School (Massachusetts, USA), and colleagues studied 60 older men and women, average age 72.9 years, who did not have dementia at the study’s start; however, 18 subjects had impaired blood flow at the start of the study. The participants drank two cups of hot cocoa per day for 30 days and did not consume any other chocolate during the study. They were given tests of memory and thinking skills, and were administered ultrasound tests to measure the amount of blood flow to the brain during the tests.  The subjects with impaired blood flow at the study’s start showed an 8.3% improvement in the blood flow to the working areas of the brain by the end of the study, while there was no improvement for those who started out with regular blood flow.  The people with impaired blood flow also improved their times on a test of working memory, with scores dropping from 167 seconds at the beginning of the study to 116 seconds at the end. There was no change in times for people with regular blood flow. Observing that: “there is a strong correlation between neurovascular coupling and cognitive function, and both can be improved by regular cocoa consumption in individuals with baseline impairments,” the study authors write that: “Better neurovascular coupling is also associated with greater white matter structural integrity.”