The same research finds that multivitamins help memory in the elderly.
The elderly can see a benefit in their cognitive and memory functions of the brain if they take a supplement every day multivitaminsbut the same is not true of the cocoa supplement, shows a new American scientific study that may disappoint many chocolate lovers.
The new study provides hope that perhaps daily multivitamins can protect to some extent against cognitive decline due to advanced age. The researchers from Wake Forest University School of Medicine in North Carolina and Brigham & Women’s Hospital in Boston, who made the relevant publication in the dementia and Alzheimer’s journal “Alzheimer & Dementia: The Journal of Alzheimer’s Association”, reported that “the large new study provides first long-term evidence for cognitive benefit of multivitamin supplements in older adults.” Something that, however, needs to be confirmed with further larger studies, as pointed out by the experts.
Previous research has provided evidence that chocolate can make the mind sharper. The new study – which was funded in part by the chocolate maker Mars and in part by the public US National Institute on Aging – seems to lead to the conclusion that chocolate can make someone happier but not smarter.
Associate Professor Peter Cohen of Harvard Medical School said that “For all of us who love chocolate, this multi-year study was our best hope to discover its hidden benefits for the brain. Unfortunately we had no luck. Even a Mars-funded study could not find a beneficial effect of chocolate on the brain.”
The new randomized clinical trial COSMOS-Mind (COcoa Supplement and Multivitamin Outcomes Study of the Mind) followed 2,262 people over 65 years of age for three years, who were randomly divided into groups and received or flavanols (main component of cocoa and chocolate), or multivitamins, or placebo. It was found that those who took extra multivitamins daily, but not cocoa, showed “statistically significant cognitive improvement over placebo,” according to scientists. The improvement thanks to the multivitamins, as the annual tests showed, related to both general cognitive function and, in particular, the executive functions of the mind, as well as episodic memory (refers to events that happened in the past).
Read the study here.
The improvement “translates” to approx 60% slowing of cognitive decline (within three years) or by approximately 1.8 years. People with cardiovascular disease benefited the most. Seniors with hypertension, high cholesterol, diabetes and depression are at greater risk of dementia.
However, researcher Professor of Gerontology and Geriatrics Laura Baker admitted that it is too early to recommend daily multivitamin supplements as a means of preventing cognitive decline and subsequent dementia (the most common form of which is Alzheimer’s disease).
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