The cocoa in question was made from the same beans as chocolate, but it was not processed into a confectionary product. Processing usually strips cocoa of the flavanols that are believed to be beneficial to arterial health. “There’s a huge difference between cocoa and chocolate,” said Dr. Naomi D. L. Fisher, the lead author of the study.
Both Dr. Fisher and her co-author Dr. Norman K. Hollenberg, receive grant support from Mars Inc., which also supplied the cocoa used in the experiments. The paper was published in the August issue of The Journal of Hypertension.
The researchers studied 34 healthy subjects, 19 of them over 50. None were taking any medications, and all were free of cardiovascular, endocrine and kidney disease. Each consumed a quart of flavanol-rich sweetened cocoa every day for four to six days.
All of the subjects had significantly improved readings on several tests of blood flow that often deteriorate with age. But the effect was much more prominent in the over-50 group than in the younger subjects.
The scientists found that the cocoa flavanols work to widen arteries by the same mechanism as the heart drug nitroglycerin.
“In theory, this should reduce the risk for heart disease,” said Dr. Fisher, who is director of the hypertension service at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. “But we need long-term, large-scale prospective trials to actually prove that.”
Coffee as a Health Drink? Studies Find Some Benefits
Coffee is not usually thought of as health food, but a number of recent studies suggest that it can be a highly beneficial drink. Researchers have found strong evidence that coffee reduces the risk of several serious ailments, including diabetes, heart disease and cirrhosis of the liver.
Among them is a systematic review of studies published last year in The Journal of the American Medical Association, which concluded that habitual coffee consumption was consistently associated with a lower risk of Type 2 diabetes. Exactly why is not known, but the authors offered several explanations.
Coffee contains antioxidants that help control the cell damage that can contribute to the development of the disease. It is also a source of chlorogenic acid, which has been shown in animal experiments to reduce glucose concentrations.
Caffeine, perhaps coffee’s most famous component, seems to have little to do with it; studies that looked at decaffeinated coffee alone found the same degree of risk reduction.
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