A recent study has found that cocoa and caffeine together rocks!
It’s been know that drinking cocoa increases cerebral blood flow, which increases cognition and attention. Caffeine is a stimulant but it can also increase anxiety.
The study showed that when drinking cocoa and caffeine together, the cocoa will lessens caffeine’s anxiety-producing effects. Therefore you get the best of both worlds — the stimulating effects and increased awareness without the anxious, nervous feeling.
It was a pretty fun study for the participants. They drank brewed cocoa, cocoa with caffeine, caffeine without cocoa, and a placebo with neither caffeine nor cocoa. After that, they did tests to evaluate both cognitive tasks and mood.
The results? Increased sustained attention.
“The results of the tests are definitely promising and show that cocoa and caffeine are good choices for students and anyone else who needs to improve sustained attention,” the researcher in the study said.
If you’re the nerdy type, you can read the actual study. It was published in the journal BMC Nutrition.
If you just want the bottom line: drink more beverages like mocha lattes if you want to improve your sustained attention span! (students and drivers going on long trips, etc.)
Journal Reference:
Ali Boolani, Jacob B. Lindheimer, Bryan D. Loy, Stephen Crozier, Patrick J. O’Connor. Acute effects of brewed cocoa consumption on attention, motivation to perform cognitive work and feelings of anxiety, energy and fatigue: a randomized, placebo-controlled crossover experiment. BMC Nutrition, 2017; 3 (1). http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s40795-016-0117-z
