There are many ways you can do to maintain brain health. In addition to exercising, you can also eat foods that are healthy for the brain, such as chocolate. What are the benefits of chocolate for the brain? Here's the review for you.
Various benefits of chocolate for your brain
Not only delicious, it has been widely known that eating chocolate can benefit heart and blood vessel health to prevent diabetes.
This is because the various ingredients in chocolate are good for your health. In fact, this content can provide a variety of benefits for the health of your nervous system and brain function.
What are they? Here are the various benefits.
1. Improve focus, memory, and learning ability
Chocolate contains flavonoid compounds, especially flavanols, which have antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties.
This property makes chocolate can facilitate blood flow to the brain which can indirectly help improve memory and focus.
In addition, the flavonoids in chocolate can penetrate into the hippocampus, which is an area of the brain that plays a role in memory and learning functions.
Not only flavonoids, the caffeine in chocolate also helps keep you focused and concentrated which is also important for helping the learning process.
2. Improve mood
The benefits of chocolate for the brain on this one are certainly familiar to your ears.
Yes, chocolate is indeed famous for its properties to improve mood or mood and make someone who eats it happy.
The reason is, it has been proven that chocolate, especially dark chocolate, can increase endorphins, which are brain chemicals that cause feelings of happiness.
In addition, chocolate is said to help reduce pain and relieve stress that often triggers your mood swings.
3. Help you smarter
Eating chocolate does not directly make you smarter.
However, the two benefits of chocolate above can help you in the learning process so that in the long run you can become smarter.
Regular consumption of chocolate has also been shown to help protect the nerves and brain and increase brain plasticity (the brain's ability to adapt).
Both are associated with increasing intelligence.
4. Lower the risk of dementia and Alzheimer's
Several studies have also found the fact that regular chocolate consumption can improve cognitive function in patients with mild cognitive impairment.
Mild cognitive impairment is a condition that often progresses to dementia or dementia, including Alzheimer's disease.
The researchers acknowledge that more research is needed to understand exactly how chocolate may lower the risk of this neurological disease.
However, the flavonoids in chocolate are believed to protect the brain from cognitive decline with age.
Flavonoids can also help prevent the formation of amyloid plaques that damage the brains of people with Alzheimer's.
5. Lowers the risk of stroke
Not only dementia, the benefits of chocolate for the brain are other, which can help reduce the risk of stroke.
This has been proven in several studies, reported by Brain and Life. One of them was published in the journal Atherosclerosis in 2017.
The study found that women who ate 1.3 ounces of chocolate a day had a lower risk of stroke than women who didn't.
While previous research, namely in 2012, revealed that men who ate about 2 ounces of chocolate for a week had a lower risk of stroke than those who did not.
What kind of chocolate is good for the brain?
Although it brings benefits, not all chocolate is good for your brain health. Therefore, you should not carelessly choose the chocolate that you will consume.
Choose dark chocolate (dark chocolate) or cocoa powder which contains high flavonoids.
On the other hand, don't choose chocolate that is low in flavonoids, such as white chocolate or milk chocolate.
In addition, do not also choose chocolate that is high in sugar, fat, and calories.
The reason is, consuming foods with these ingredients in excess can increase cholesterol levels and cause overweight.
Both are risk factors that can cause stroke.
In fact, women who ate a diet high in saturated fat were more likely to develop memory problems and thinking problems than those who ate more unsaturated fats.
Although there are many benefits of consuming chocolate, it should not be consumed in excess.
Meanwhile, to get the benefits of chocolate above more optimally, you can eat foods containing other flavonoids.
These include broccoli, kale, apples, red grapes, chickpeas, cherry tomatoes, and onions.
In addition, you also need to eat foods with balanced nutrition that are good for brain health.
Don't forget to also adopt other healthy lifestyles, such as quitting smoking, exercising regularly, and getting enough sleep.