Chocolate Is Good for Old Lady Brains

By Kate Dries  |  August 8, 2013 | 4:30pm
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It’s been definitively proven on this very site that nothing is better than sex, not even chocolate. But for old people, that might not be the case. A new study has found that chocolate might make them harder, better, faster stronger – at least in the brain.

For a study published in the journal Neurology this week (“The Most Widely Read and Highly-Cited Peer Reviewed Neurology Journal”), researchers had old folks take a memory and reasoning test, drink hot chocolate every day for a month, and then take another test. Those who were drinking the hot chocolate and had had limited brain blood flow and cognitive skills beforehand, had better blood flow and were slightly faster on their cognitive skills test after drinking all that magic juice

This results of this study might have more widespread applications than just causing the market for hot chocolate to dominate the market for Ovaltine, reports the L.A. Times:

By showing that blood flow to the brain is associated with cognitive function, the study helps explain earlier findings that people with high blood pressure and other cardiovascular conditions were prone to developing dementia. This, in turn, suggests that the cognitive functioning test and other measures used in the trial may one day serve as cheap, noninvasive methods to screen people for risk of dementia.

The only problem is that scientists don’t know how long you’d have to drink the chocolate for to make its magical properties keep working (obviously your whole life, just to be safe) and that yes, you still should watch your weight. They also gave no credit to Juliette Binoche, who figured this all out years ago.

Chocolate may help keep brain healthy, sharp in old age, study says [LAT]

Image via Altin Osmanaj/Shutterstock.

 
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