Chocolate could have one very unexpected health benefit

It's not as though we needed an excuse to enjoy chocolate, but we'll welcome every one of them that comes our way...

In the latest up vote for cocoa, it has been found that a daily helping of the chocolatey beverage may give the typical 60-year-old the memory function of a person twenty to thirty years younger. Scientists at Columbia University Medical Centre published the results of an experiment based on the effects of flavanol on the aging human brain in the journal Nature Neuroscience this weekend. The flavanol used for the test was extracted from cocoa beans. Over the course of three months, 37 healthy volunteers aged 50-69 were spilt into two groups who had a daily drink of cocoa containing either a high dose of flavanols, (900 milligrammes), or a low dose, (10mg). Researchers carried out brain imaging on all participants, measuring the blood volume in a part of the hippocampal formation called the dentate gyrus, a region responsible for memory formation and whose performance is age-sensitive. Participants also carried out memory tests before and after the volunteers had their daily drinks; a 20-minute pattern-recognition exercise specifically addressing the dentate gyrus. Scientists found that faster and recognition among the high-flavanol group was supported by their blood volume test results. “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 senior author of the study Scott Small, a professor of neurology at Columbia University Medical Centre in New York. "I suppose that our study does show, for the first time, that flavanols improves the function of humans' dentate gyrus, particularly in ageing humans."