Tea at Trianon: Flavanols and Memory Loss

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Tuesday, January 20, 2015

Flavanols and Memory Loss

They could reverse memory loss. From NIH:

As we get older, remembering new stuff—an updated computer password or the name of that person whom we met last night (or was it two nights ago?)—can bring a busy day to a head-scratching halt. But are these “senior moments” just something that we have to accept? Maybe not.

In a study published in Nature Neuroscience, a research team partially funded by NIH has provided evidence that changes in a specific brain region are associated with age-related memory loss [1]. And they found that they could reverse this loss by boosting activity in this part of the brain, called the dentate gyrus. What’s especially interesting is that this boost came from a drink that was specially formulated to be rich in flavanols, a group of antioxidant compounds found in cocoa beans. Sounds like every chocolate lover’s dream! But let’s drill down a little deeper.

The story of cocoa’s possible effect on cognition began a few years ago when Scott Small, a neurologist at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons in New York, set out to identify the source of normal, age-related memory decline. Observational studies from his lab and others [2,3,4] suggested that aging led to progressively lower activity in the dentate gyrus in various animal models, as well as humans. But no one had tried to reverse these changes in humans.

To take a closer look, Small used an imaging technique called functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) to scan the brains of 35 healthy adults of varying ages. The scans measured blood flow in all regions of the hippocampus, which is the general area of the brain that contains the dentate gyrus. The imaging tests showed that older folks had less blood flow in the dentate gyrus than younger people. Small also compared his fMRI data with those from a previous brain imaging study of people in the earliest stage of Alzheimer’s disease. The comparison revealed that the brain regions affected by normal aging appear to be distinct from those affected in early-stage Alzheimer’s disease. (Read more.)