Coffee without anxiety? Mix cocoa!
A mixture of cocoa with the caffeine present in coffee improves concentration and relieves anxiety, study finds
Edited and resized image by Lidia Adriana is available on Unsplash
Sure, you can have a cup of coffee or a hot mug of chocolate in the morning... Or you can avoid coffee cravings - and still improve your concentration - by adding a healthy dose of chocolate to your morning cup of coffee.
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Researchers have recently explored the binding powers of cocoa and caffeine, studying the effects that various beverages have had on factors such as "attention, motivation to do cognitive work, and feelings of anxiety, energy, and fatigue."
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For the double-blind study, volunteers drank fermented cocoa, cocoa with caffeine, caffeine without cocoa, and a placebo (flavored and colored infused water) without caffeine or cocoa. Before drinking and then three times after drinking, participants took a series of tests to assess mood, attention and motivation to perform cognitive tasks. Volunteers repeated the tests with each drink at least 48 hours apart, at approximately the same time of day.
"It was a really fun study," said author Ali Boolani, professor at Clarkson University, in the United States, in a statement. "Cocoa increases cerebral blood flow, which increases cognition and attention. Caffeine alone can increase anxiety. This particular project found that cocoa decreases the anxiety-causing effects of caffeine - a good reason to drink mocha!"
Tests
As part of their assignments, participants watched as letters crossed a screen and had to respond when an "X" appeared after an "A." They also had to do math equations (subtraction) and had to watch a screen and point out when odd numbers appeared on a line.
Those who drank cocoa had faster response rates than those who drank flavored water. Those participants who drank caffeinated cocoa had even higher accuracy rates than those who drank cocoa alone. The results were published in the journal BMC Nutrition.
After the study, sponsored by Hershey Company, the Clarkson and University of Georgia research team concluded:
"Fermented cocoa can acutely reduce errors associated with attention in the absence of changes in perceived motivation to perform cognitive tasks or feelings of energy and fatigue. The supplemental caffeine in cocoa beans can improve aspects of attention while cocoa beans can attenuate the effects anxiety triggers found only when drinking caffeine."
"The test results are definitely promising and show that cocoa and caffeine are good choices for students and anyone else who needs to improve sustained attention," says Boolani.
