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Eating chocolate is associated with improved brain function

washingtonpost.com

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Re: Eating chocolate is associated with improved brain function

#31

Post by leereeves »

Gatsky wrote: post #2

Self-reported chocolate intake? There are so many possible confounders here. It seens quite implausible that chocolate can acutely enhance cognitive ability. Alternative explanations are more likely, although not newsworthy. I also think that nutrition science, which is deficient enough as it is, should not be mixed with epidemiology, which seems designed to detect spurious associations.

We should consider all research skeptically, but why does it seem particularly implausible that cocoa flavanols can enhance cognitive ability?

Other research:

https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=cocoa+flavanols+cogniti...

Re: Eating chocolate is associated with improved brain function

#32

Post by Gatsky »

adenadel wrote: post #26
Gatsky wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The study is still 'correlation-digging'. Bonferroni won't fix the problem that these kinds of studies will throw up statistically significant associations that provide no insight into anything meaningful, due to confounders, biases, poor design etc. There is no equivalent xkcd however.

I don't think that anyone would take the results of this article as a statement of absolute fact. In the discussion they mentioned some more (better controlled) studies investigating the role of cocoa flavanols in "cognitive tasks". Doing any longitudinal study with humans suffer from confounders, biases, and poor design because we can't do controlled, long-term research on humans. You just have to take these limitat…

Yes, that's fine, I was pointing out that correcting for multiple hypothesis testing does not deal with the issue cited (albeit rather abruptly) by yxitcti.

Re: Eating chocolate is associated with improved brain function

#33

Post by kingsley3 »

Two studies found that the main ingredient in chocolate, cocoa, reduced all-cause mortality[1,2].

I tested it's effect on my so called "biological" age.

It seemed to make me a little younger.

There's a fun new 5 minute video about my experiment called "The Younger Year"[3].

It has before and after clips of yours truly.

Thanks, Kingsley

References

[1] Arch Intern Med. 2006 Feb 27;166(4):411-7. Cocoa intake, blood pressure, and cardiovascular mortality: the Zutphen Elderly Study. Buijsse B, Feskens EJ, Kok FJ, Kromhout D.

[2] Bayard V, Chamorro F, Motta J, Hollenberg NK. Does Flavanol Intake Influence Mortality from Nitric Oxide-Dependent Processes? Ischemic Heart Disease, Stroke, Diabetes Mellitus, and Cancer in Panama. Int J Med Sci 2007; 4(1):53-58. doi:10.7150/ijms.4.53. Available

[3] "The Younger Year" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r7XcJ2VsLhI

Re: Eating chocolate is associated with improved brain function

#34

Post by Gatsky »

Adabenflaben wrote: post #29
Gatsky wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The study is still 'correlation-digging'. Bonferroni won't fix the problem that these kinds of studies will throw up statistically significant associations that provide no insight into anything meaningful, due to confounders, biases, poor design etc. There is no equivalent xkcd however.

There's more to it than just the things you mentioned, and I'd argue that it's an even bigger problem. The fact studies are adaptively chosen and performed based on the results of past studies on the same (or related) data leads to increased instances of false discovery. This is something that is directly addressed in some very recent recent work (not uncoincidentally making reference to this exact XKCD comic): http:…

Freedman's paradox refers to adaptive data analysis within one dataset. The reusable holdout is designed to permit adaptive analysis on the same dataset without inflating the false discovery rate. The problem doesn't apply if you are collecting new data and testing the hypothesis, that's the ideal scenario.

Re: Eating chocolate is associated with improved brain function

#35

Post by winter_blue »

DenisM wrote: post #30
winter_blue wrote: post #3

Just as an FYI, I found a company recently that makes chocolate with zeor sugar, that's sweetened with Stevia: https://www.cocopolo.com/ I didn't like their dark chocolate, but their milk chocolate comes pretty close to regular milk chocolate.

Are you conserved with sugar per se, or the insulin response? Cocoa causes insulin spike even when sugar-free, iirc.

Yup, I am concerned about the insulin response / glycemic index. Hmm...

Re: Eating chocolate is associated with improved brain function

#36

Post by _snydly »

It's better to wait for multiple, large randomized controlled trials to be performed before making claims about improved brain function.

But maybe, for now, we can eat more chocolate for another ~proven benefit: "Flavanol-rich chocolate and cocoa products may have a small but statistically significant effect in lowering blood pressure.."

http://www.cochrane.org/CD008893/HTN_effect-of-cocoa-on-bloo...

Re: Eating chocolate is associated with improved brain function

#38

Post by Synaesthesia »

Food companies distort nutrition science by funding studies. That's why we have very specific titles like "Concord grape juice, cognitive function, and driving performance," or, "Walnut ingestion in adults at risk for diabetes." Usually the results are positive.

http://www.vox.com/2016/3/3/11148422/food-science-nutrition-...

Re: Eating chocolate is associated with improved brain function

#40

Post by TheSpiceIsLife »

im3w1l wrote: post #17
mystikal wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's caffeine and sugar in it, seems reasonable, plus the pleasure of it means more endorphins. That's like three direct up-regulators of brain function.

Also theobromine

And theophylline.

From wikipedia[1]:

Theophylline is naturally found in cocoa beans. Amounts as high as 3.7 mg/g have been reported in Criollo cocoa beans.

Medical uses[edit]

The main actions of theophylline involve:

- relaxing bronchial smooth muscle - increasing heart muscle contractility and efficiency; as a positive inotropic - increasing heart rate: (positive chronotropic)[1] - increasing blood pressure - increasing renal blood flow - anti-inflammatory effects - central nervous system stimulatory effect mainly on the medullary respiratory center.

Theophylline is also a metabolite of caffeine[2].

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theophylline 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caffeine#Pharmacokinetics

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