When I first heard of chiropractors marketing a type of chocolate as a "health food," I was a bit surprised and maybe a little annoyed. I'm all for backend marketing of products and services that can really help our patients, but chocolate?
I did a little more research and it turns out they might be on to a good idea. In fact, I just read that, according to a study published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology (JACC), cocoa flavanols may be an important part of a healthy diet for people with cardiovascular disease, which affects more than 80 million Americans.
The research, conducted at the University of California San Francisco found that daily cocoa flavanol consumption more than doubled the number of circulating angiogenic cells (CACs) in the blood. These cells have been shown to have vessel repair and maintenance functions, which can contribute to healthy blood vessels. Poor blood vessel function is recognized as an early stage in the development process of cardiovascular diseases (CVD), including coronary artery disease. Increasing levels of CACs have also been associated with a decreased risk of death from cardiovascular causes, according to a 2005 study published in the New England Journal of Medicine.
To me, the new study published in JACC was important in that, while previous research pointed to physical activity and experimental drug therapy to increase CAC levels, this study focuses on an alternative to drugs.
The study also showed that high-flavanol cocoa significantly reduced systolic blood pressure, an important risk factor for heart disease and stroke, and improved blood vessel function by 47% compared to low-flavanol consumption in optimally medicated adults with severe cardiovascular disease.
Obviously, they didn't use just any old chocolate in the research. It was a specially prepared cocoa drink with a high level of flavanol. Other research has shown that while solid raw chocolate products often contain a substantial amount of flavanols, chocolate beverages don't. In addition, while found in abundance in raw cocoa beans, most cocoa flavanols are destroyed during the conventional chocolate-making process. Which means that regular chocolate bought in the grocery store -- overloaded with sugars and processed to within an inch of its life -- is simply tasty poison.
“And perhaps most importantly, for the first time, we found that cocoa flavanols might even directly mobilize important cells that could repair damaged blood vessels. The benefits are substantial, without any observed adverse effects,” added study author Christian Heiss, MD, Heinrich-Heine University.
A number of previously published studies already suggested that the consumption of cocoa flavanols can have important beneficial effects on the function of the body’s network of blood vessels. Yet, contrary to statements often made in the popular media, the collective research demonstrates that the cardiovascular effects of cocoa flavanols are independent of general "antioxidant" effects that cocoa flavanols exhibit in a test tube, outside of the body. The body of research not only suggests that these cocoa flavanols may provide a dietary approach to maintaining cardiovascular function and health, but also points to new possibilities for cocoa flavanol-based interventions associated with age-related blood vessel dysfunction and vascular complications of type 2 diabetes.
Can you imagine the look on patients' faces if you offered them some chocolate for their health?
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