The study, published in the peer-reviewed journal Appetite, found that people who eat more chocolate have higher levels of memory and abstract thinking. According to this study, the improvement of brain function brought by chocolate is not affected by common health indicators such as age and weight.
Other factors affecting the research results cannot be ruled out. People who eat more chocolate tend to have better eating habits and drink less wine. In addition, no matter how much chocolate they ate, the subjects in the study reported how much chocolate they ate according to their own memories.
Sorry, guys, but you may not be able to use this research as an excuse for the chocolate party at 3 pm.
Participants were divided into two groups. One group never eats chocolate or seldom eats chocolate (337 people), while the other group eats chocolate at least once a week (63 1 person). Subsequently, the researchers asked the two groups to undergo different kinds of brain function tests-including object position test (spatial memory), abstract reasoning, working memory and attention test. Finally, the researchers analyzed the relationship between chocolate intake and these cognitive tests.
Because dementia can damage people's cognitive ability, patients with this disease will be excluded in the data analysis stage; People who have had a stroke will also be excluded, because a stroke will also affect the test results.
The results show that according to the respondents' self-reports, women are the group that eat more chocolate, so gender factors may also affect the data results. Women often perform better than men in some cognitive fields, and this phenomenon becomes more obvious with the increase of age.
Compared with people who don't eat chocolate or seldom eat chocolate, people who eat chocolate often seem to have lower chances of developing hypertension or diabetes, and their fasting blood glucose index (the standard for judging early diabetes) is also lower. But at the same time, their cholesterol levels are also higher, including low-density lipoprotein (bad) cholesterol levels closely related to cardiovascular health.