Today’s post is by author Sasa Loncar
It is not difficult to keep your brain healthy. Health-conscious people may not know that adding to a good diet is as essential for mental health and performance as compared to maintaining physical health. Natural supplements coupled with a healthy detox diet are a good and easy way to maintain mental attention, memory, and general mood.
An oxidant plant that is taken from the French maritime pine tree bark is called Pycnogenol (pronounced pic-noj-en-all). It has been found to also improve mental capabilities in healthy college kids during a clinical trial that was published in the PanminervaMedica.
The trial was done at the Pescara University, where it enrolled fifty three Italian university scholars between the ages of eighteen and twenty-seven. Students were divided into one control group and one test group . The test group had to take 100 mg of Pycnogenol every day for a total eight weeks. Their mental capabilities were determined with cognitive function tests that were done using methods that were assisted by computer. The student’s final exam results were also used. Oral IQ tests were used to make sure that the students that were in study had similar intelligence levels.
The study indicated that:
- Pycnogenol enhanced their mental capabilities, including better sustained attention levels, mood and memory in the students during the eight weeks
- Students who took the supplement had better university exam results than the other students.
- Contentedness and alertness also improved greatly with the supplement group, and their anxiety levels went down 17%
Dr. Gianni Belcaro, the lead researcher from Pescara University in Italy, said that the blood supply full of oxygen to the brain is very important for cognitive function, and the betterment of the vascular function due to the supplement could be the reason for the improved effects that were found in the test group.
The results not only indicated that Pycnogenol decreases anxiety, it also proved the supplement’s ability to improve mental capabilities by looking at the test group’s exam results. Researchers said that many of the associated physiological additions from the supplement may have added to the improvement of the cognitive functioning in the students – specifically the antioxidant potency as well as the improvement in the circulation of the blood.
Though the results look good, they need further investigation using a larger group of people.
This study also confirms past results that Pycnogenol betters cognitive function . Research that was put in the Journal of Psychopharmacology showed that Pycnogenol improved not just the numerical memory, but also the spatial memory, in Australia’s elderly citizens.
