Cocoa can be seen as a dietary supplement
to protect human cognition and can counteract different types of cognitive
decline.
Frontiers
A balanced diet is chocolate in both hands -- a phrase commonly
used to justify ones chocolate snacking behavior.
A phrase now shown to
actually harbor some truth, as the cocoa bean is a rich source of flavanols: a
class of natural compounds that has neuroprotective effects.
In their recent review published in Frontiers in
Nutrition, Italian researchers examined the available literature for the
effects of acute and chronic administration of cocoa flavanols on different
cognitive domains.
In other words: what happens to your brain up to a few hours
after you eat cocoa flavanols, and what happens when you sustain such a cocoa
flavanol enriched diet for a prolonged period of time?
Although randomized controlled trials investigating the acute
effect of cocoa flavanols are sparse, most of them point towards a beneficial
effect on cognitive performance.
And for women, eating cocoa after
a night of total sleep deprivation actually counteracted the cognitive
impairment (i.e. less accuracy in performing tasks) that such a night brings
about.
Promising results for people that suffer from chronic sleep deprivation
or work shifts.
It has to be noted though, that the effects depended on the
length and mental load of the used cognitive tests to measure the effect of
acute cocoa consumption.
In young and healthy adults, for example, a high
demanding cognitive test was required to uncover the subtle immediate
behavioral effects that cocoa flavanols have on this group.
The effects of relatively long-term ingestion of cocoa flavanols
(ranging from 5 days up to 3 months) has generally been investigated in elderly
individuals.
It turns out that for them cognitive performance was improved by a
daily intake of cocoa flavanols. Factors such as attention, processing speed,
working memory, and verbal fluency were greatly affected.
These effects were,
however, most pronounced in older adults with a starting memory decline or
other mild cognitive impairments.
And this was exactly the most unexpected and promising result
according to authors Valentina Socci and Michele Ferrara from the University of
L'Aquila in Italy.
"This result suggests the potential of cocoa flavanols
to protect cognition in vulnerable populations over time by improving cognitive
performance. If you look at the underlying mechanism, the cocoa flavanols have
beneficial effects for cardiovascular health and can increase cerebral blood
volume in the dentate gyrus of the hippocampus. This structure is particularly
affected by aging and therefore the potential source of age-related memory
decline in humans."
So should cocoa become a dietary supplement to improve our
cognition?
"Regular intake of cocoa and chocolate could indeed provide
beneficial effects on cognitive functioning over time. There are, however,
potential side effects of eating cocoa and chocolate. Those are generally
linked to the caloric value of chocolate, some inherent chemical compounds of
the cocoa plant such as caffeine and theobromine, and a variety of additives we
add to chocolate such as sugar or milk."
Nonetheless, the scientists are the first to put their results
into practice: "Dark chocolate is a rich source of flavanols. So we always
eat some dark chocolate. Every day."