Keep Mentally Sharp - Eat Chocolate!

Keep Mentally Sharp - Eat Chocolate!

Shamila Moodley

A new study has found that a balanced diet is having a piece of chocolate in both hands. This could also be a healthy diet when it comes to brain health.

Flavonols is a natural compound found in cocoa bean that have a neuroprotective effect. When we eat chocolate, drink cocoa or hot chocolate our problem-solving memory and general cognition skills are kept sharp.

Flavonols have a strong effect on woman and can counteract the negative effect of a poor night’s sleep. According to “What Doctors Won’t Tell You”, the elderly should also be eating some chocolates everyday as it helps with attention processing, working, memory and verbal fluency. Researchers from the University of L’ Aquila in Italy advise that the effects are subtler in young and healthy adults, such as during stressful times when sitting for exams, but they still there. 

Researchers who have reviewed a range of previously published studies also advise that, cocoa flavonols improve the blood flow in the brain, especially to the hippocampus, which controls memory and is vulnerable as we age. Flavonols also help maintain heart health. 

Remember you can’t get too much of a good thing, eating chocolates regularly will increase the calories in our diet. Many commercially available products contain additives as well as sugar and milk, which aren’t so great for other aspects of our health. 

The take home message from “What doctors Won’t tell you" is, yes eat chocolate every day , especially as you get older, but try dark chocolate every day, ideally containing 70% cocoa.