Chocolate may help keep brain healthy

MINNEAPOLIS – Drinking two cups of hot chocolate a day may help older people keep their brains healthy and their thinking skills sharp, according to a study published in the August 7, 2013, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.

The study involved 60 people with an average age of 73 who did not have dementia. The participants drank two cups of hot cocoa per day for 30 days and did not consume any other chocolate during the study. They were given tests of memory and thinking skills. They also had ultrasounds tests to measure the amount of blood flow to the brain during the tests.

"We're learning more about blood flow in the brain and its effect on thinking skills," said study author Farzaneh A. Sorond, MD, PhD, of Harvard Medical School in Boston and a member of the American Academy of Neurology. "As different areas of the brain need more energy to complete their tasks, they also need greater blood flow. This relationship, called neurovascular coupling, may play an important role in diseases such as Alzheimer's."

Of the 60 participants, 18 had impaired blood flow at the start of the study. Those people had an 8.3-percent improvement in the blood flow to the working areas of the brain by the end of the study, while there was no improvement for those who started out with regular blood flow.

The people with impaired blood flow also improved their times on a test of working memory, with scores dropping from 167 seconds at the beginning of the study to 116 seconds at the end. There was no change in times for people with regular blood flow.

A total of 24 of the participants also had MRI scans of the brain to look for tiny areas of brain damage. The scans found that people with impaired blood flow were also more likely to have these areas of brain damage.

Half of the study participants received hot cocoa that was rich in the antioxidant flavanol, while the other half received flavanol-poor hot cocoa. There were no differences between the two groups in the results.

"More work is needed to prove a link between cocoa, blood flow problems and cognitive decline," said Paul B. Rosenberg, MD, of Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in Baltimore, who wrote an editorial accompanying the study. "But this is an important first step that could guide future studies."

Eurekalert

Does Happiness Increase As We Get Older?

Question: Do we get sadder as we get older?

Answer: It seems that just the opposite is true. There's a lot of evidence that we get happier the older we get.

A Gallup telephone poll of 340,000 people across the U.S. showed that happiness comes with age. However, the poll didn't uncover the cause of this phenomenon.

Dr. Arthur A. Stone, a professor of psychology at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, was the lead author of a study based on the Gallup survey. He speculated on the causes for this happiness.

"It could be that there are environmental changes, or it could be psychological changes about the way we view the world, or it could even be biological — for example brain chemistry or endocrine changes," Dr. Stone told the New York Times in 2010.

The telephone survey included people between 18 and 85. The survey showed that people start out at age 18 feeling pretty good. However, they feel progressively worse until they hit 50.

But after that point, people begin getting happier as they age. By the time they are 85, they are even more satisfied with themselves than they were at 18.

Why are older people happier? I collected some theories. Older people are happier because they have:

• A deeper appreciation of the value of life
• A feeling of fulfillment
• A greater ability to understand and handle life's vicissitudes
• Fewer aspirations and expectations of themselves
• The ability to live in the present and not worry about the future
• The wisdom to know they can't please everyone all the time
• An inclination to see situations more positively

A University of Chicago study also showed that happiness increases with age. The researchers asked a cross section of Americans how happy they were. The question was administered in face-to-face interviews of population samples that ranged from about 1,500 to 3,000.

The Chicago researchers theorized that older people are happier because with age comes positive psychosocial traits, such as self-integration and self-esteem; these signs of maturity could contribute to a better sense of overall well-being.

"Older people are better able to recognize what will bother them, and better able to negotiate their environment," said Susan Turk Charles, a psychologist at the University of California, Irvine.

One study looked at people's positive and negative emotions over the course of 23 years, and compared participants by age group. Researchers found that teenagers most frequently reported negative emotions, while octogenarians seemed to feel the least negative.

If you would like to read more columns, you can order a copy of "How to be a Healthy Geezer" at www.healthygeezer.com.

All rights reserved © 2013 by Fred Cicetti

S: Livescience