Chocolate improves maths, reveals research

London, April 3: Is maths making you mentally drained? If despite repeated attempts those complicated numerical problems seem beyond your grasp, do not fret. Just munch on a bar of chocolate and start again. You’ll probably crack it.

Chocolate is no cure-all but it sure is an interesting item. After convincing scientists of benefitting the heart and also having some anti-cancerdefine properties, this popular mood-elevator has now shown to benefit people in mental arithmetic.

A new study has revealed that chocolate could improve a person’s capability of doing maths and also give him an energy boost.

Chocolate contains compounds called flavanols, which increase the blood flow into the brain, thus improving its problem-solving abilities.

Study author Prof David Kennedy, director of the brain, performance and nutrition research centre at Northumbria University, said that chocolate could be of advantage in mentally challenging tasks.

Findings of the study suggest that students who binge on chocolate when revising for exams may gain a real benefit from doing so.

"For things that are difficult to do, mentally demanding things that maybe crop up in your work it could help," Prof Kennedy said.

The study involved 30 volunteers, who were asked to count backwards in groups of three from a random number between 800 and 999. It was found that they could perform the task more accurately and in lesser time after gulping down a hot cocoa drink containing 500 mg flavanols.

However, the subjects could not repeat the results when asked to count backwards in groups of seven, which the researchers described as a more complex task, entailing the usage of a slightly different part of the brain.

Interestingly, the volunteers, after taking the cocoa drink, did not seem to get exhausted of doing the tasks, despite being asked to do them over and over again for almost an hour.

Volunteers in the study were given 500 mg of flavanol, which is too large an amount to be naturally found in the diet.

The best way to get a good dose of flavanols is dark chocolate but researchers insist that it is not the only food item that contains the chemicals. They are also found in fruits and vegetables, though in lesser quantities.

“We are also going to look at the effect of lower doses of flavanol on the brain,” said Emma Wightman, one of the study researchers.

Prof. Kennedy added that even the amount of chocolate in regular diets is known to be “protective against declining function and that kind of thing”.