{"id":29882,"date":"2014-10-28T09:39:44","date_gmt":"2014-10-28T01:39:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=29882"},"modified":"2014-10-28T09:39:44","modified_gmt":"2014-10-28T01:39:44","slug":"study-shows-cocoa-sharply-decreases-memory-loss","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2014\/10\/28\/study-shows-cocoa-sharply-decreases-memory-loss\/","title":{"rendered":"Study shows cocoa sharply decreases memory loss"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"hotchocolate-shutterstockphoto\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Scientists announced on Sunday that flavanols – bioactive ingredients found in cocoa – had a significant impact on age-related memory decline.<\/p>\n

Experiments performed on a group of volunteers showed that these compounds sharply reversed the slump in memory brought on by aging.<\/p>\n

Over a test period of three months, 37 healthy volunteers from the ages of 50-69 were given a daily dose of a specially-prepared cocoa drink containing either 900 milligrammes or 10mg of flavanols.<\/p>\n

The scientists then conducted brain imaging procedures, by which they measured the volume of blood in the dentate gyrus, which is an important part of the hippocampus.<\/p>\n

The hippocampus is an area of the brain responsible for memory formation. The performance of this region generally declines with the onset of advanced age.<\/p>\n

Memory tests involving 20-minute pattern-recognition exercises were also conducted before and after the participants began taking the drink.<\/p>\n

The test group drinking the cocoa with the high-flavanol content registered remarkable improvements to their memory, as well as an increase in blood flow to the dentate gyrus.<\/p>\n

“If a participant had the memory of a typical 60-year-old at the beginning of the study, after three months that person on average had the memory of a typical 30- or 40-year-old,” said Scott Small, a professor of neurology at Columbia University Medical Center in New York.<\/p>\n

“I suppose that our study does show, for the first time, that flavanols improves the function of humans’ dentate gyrus, particularly in ageing humans,” he added<\/p>\n

Small cautioned, however, that although early findings have proven hopeful, more work – within a bigger test group – is necessary in order to prove these observations.<\/p>\n

The experiment was published by the journal Nature Neuroscience.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Scientists announced on Sunday that flavanols – bioactive ingredients found in cocoa – had a significant impact on age-related memory …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":3609,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1482,37],"tags":[8366,3976,8365,8364,8363],"class_list":["post-29882","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-breaking","category-health","tag-brain-activity","tag-cocoa","tag-flavanols","tag-memory-decline","tag-memory-loss","mauthors-angie-duarte","mauthors-philippine-canadian-inquirer"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29882","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29882"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29882\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3609"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29882"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29882"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29882"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}