Contents:
- Medical Video: Foods That Make You Smart | Top 10 Foods to Eat to Be Smarter
- Chocolate can improve brain performance
- So can eating chocolate really make you smart?
- Chocolate, a healthy lifestyle, and intelligence
Medical Video: Foods That Make You Smart | Top 10 Foods to Eat to Be Smarter
It has been widely known that eating chocolate can benefit the health of the heart and blood vessels, maintain blood pressure, reduce risk stroke, even increases skin protection against sunlight. It turns out that the benefits of chocolate don't stop there, you know. Eating chocolate is also proven to help improve intelligence. How can? See the explanation here.
Chocolate can improve brain performance
In a study that lasted more than 30 years in the United States, experts involved around one thousand participants who would be observed. The development of cognitive abilities of a thousand research participants was continuously monitored.
The researchers used a test to measure brain performance of participants who consumed chocolate regularly. These tests include assessment of verbal memory, visual and spatial memory, organizing, abstract reasoning, scanning and tracking, including general memory tests.
The study found that participants who ate chocolate as much as once a week or more than once a week had higher test scores than participants who ate chocolate less than once a week.
Other studies also found that regular consumption of chocolate can improve cognitive function in patients with mild cognitive impairment (mild cognitive impairment), which is often a condition that can develop into dementia or senile.
So can eating chocolate really make you smart?
The researchers acknowledge that further research is still needed to understand exactly how chocolate can improve brain ability. However, experts believe that the content of flavonoids that are very rich in chocolate can protect the brain from decreasing cognitive function with age.
In addition, other ingredients such as caffeine and theobromine can also increase alertness and mental health. Chocolate also contains methylxanthines which can increase the ability to concentrate. These compounds are thought to increase blood flow to the brain and improve brain performance. With good brain performance, certainly the level of intelligence of a person will follow.
However, to get the benefits of eating chocolate for intelligence, you should not be careless choose chocolate. The problem is, there are currently many types of chocolate available.
Always choose the darkest chocolate, for example dark chocolate. The reason is because dark chocolate contains cocoa is still high and not mixed with many additional ingredients such as milk, cream, or sugar. The higher the content of cocoa, the more flavonoids and other important compounds.
Chocolate, a healthy lifestyle, and intelligence
Researchers emphasize that regular consumption of chocolate is indeed beneficial for brain performance and has a protective effect against decreased cognitive function. Especially caused by the aging process.
However, chocolate consumption should always be balanced with a healthy diet and overall lifestyle. Most chocolate contains calories and sugar which is high enough so that there needs to be a consideration of total calorie intake with daily calorie needs.
In addition, intelligence is not only influenced by food. There are still many other factors that can shape intelligence. For example brain health, genetic factors, and of course the business factors of each individual.
