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✦ New Frontier Of Your Mind ✦
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Thirty seven volunteers.
Half drank a strong cocoa flavanol mix for three months. The rest drank a weak one.
Scans watched blood flow deep in the memory circuit.
The strong group came out sharper on a pattern task…
Then a trial almost a hundred times bigger went after the claim.
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// DentateDial
Scott Small ran that first study at Columbia, back in 2014.
His volunteers ran from 50 to 69 years old. One group took 900 mg of flavanols a day, the other took 10.
Small put the gain in plain terms. “…after three months that person on average had the memory of a typical 30- or 40-year-old.”
He said in the same breath that it needed a bigger test. And he warned readers off the chocolate aisle.
↗ Source: Brickman, Nature Neuroscience, 2014
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The bigger test arrived nine years later, and it was built to settle things.
Urine samples went in first, so nobody had to trust a food diary.
That one step changed what the answer looked like.
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// The Facts
| 3,562 |
older adults, followed for three years. |
| 500 |
mg of cocoa flavanols a day, 80 of them epicatechin. |
| 0 |
significant gain in memory across the full group. |
Urine tests in 1,361 of them measured what they already ate. The ones who started lowest did gain, and their scores came back up to the level of the high intake group. A separate clinic subgroup of 573 found nothing on its main measure either.
↗ Source: Brickman, PNAS, 2023
↗ Source: Vyas, Am J Clin Nutr, 2023
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Flavanols fill a gap. They do not add a gear.
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// The Pivot
First find out if you have one
Eating plenty already? The pill has nothing to add. Running short? It brought memory back up.
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So the question is not whether to buy a tub of capsules.
It is whether your week already carries the stuff.
In Britain, tea, apples and berries do most of that work. Most older adults there already run at the level the pill delivered.
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// The Fuel
Two cups and an apple
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// The Steps
Fill The Gap
Start with what a normal week of yours holds.
| 01 |
Count your cups of tea, apples and berries. |
| 02 |
Thin week? Two cups of tea a day is the easy lift. |
| 03 |
Add an apple with the skin on, and a handful of berries. |
| 04 |
Prefer a capsule? The trials used 500 mg a day. |
| 05 |
Give it a month, since the trials ran in years. |
↗ Source: University of Reading on the same trial, 2023
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// Quick Wins
Green tea and black tea both carry flavanols.
A chocolate bar is not the shortcut. Ordinary processing strips most of the flavanols out.
Already eating this way? Keep your money in your pocket.
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Most supplement copy quotes the small study and skips the big one.
I spend more than $20,000 a year on private research… the sort hedge funds pay for. Walled off from the public.
Then I read both papers, in order.
My own week runs three cups of tea a day and fruit most mornings. No capsules here, and that is one man’s call.
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// Quick Check
First reaction?
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Stay primal,
Dex
Primal Code
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