Want To Improve Your Memory? Eat Chocolate

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You've already heard that eating a little bit of dark chocolate every day is good for you — it can raise your good cholesterol, lower your bad cholesterol, and has been linked to weight loss. Well, now there's yet another excuse to eat your favorite, no-longer-guilty pleasure: A new study suggests that a compound found in chocolate, dietary cocoa flavanols, can reverse the process of age-related memory loss.

Scientists at Columbia University Medical Center found that the flavanols increase connectivity and blood flow in a region of the brain critical to memory. Researchers asked 37 participants ranging in age from 50 to 69 to drink either a high-flavanol mixture or a low-flavanol mixture. Subjects who drank the high-flavanol solution performed better on a pattern-recognition test designed to gauge memory, and showed increased function the dentate gyrus, a part of the brain's hippocampus associated with memory.

Full article... (mindbodygreen.com)

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