Why lowering inflammation protects your heart & dark chocolate helps….

Today's Post: Tuesday, 10-27-2009

Last Friday, 10-23, Health Day News had a story they titled.:

“Cocoa in Chocolate May Be Good for the Heart”

by HealthDay Reporter by Jennifer Thomas.

It seems that some researchers in Spain added about 1.4 ounces of unsweetened cocoa powder to the skim milk one group was drinking and just gave the control group skim milk only.

(That’s a decent amount as a Hershey’s Special Dark candy bar is just a bit over 1.4 ounces. Also, they might have gotten even better results making the unsweetened cocoa powder into cocoa with no added milk or sugars based on the other research I’ve seen.)

After one month, the people who drank the cocoa-flavored skim milk had lower levels of inflammatory markers than those drinking the skim milk alone.

They decided to study people at very high risk of heart disease, diabetics with an average age of 70 with at least 3 other risk factors for heart disease.

So their study shows that cocoa, or dark chocolate, even helps people at the very highest risk of heart attacks.

But the explanation of how inflammation causes heart disease in the article was very valuable also.

The measure of inflammation that this study measured was “adhesion molecules.” (My very strong suspicion is that it is because high HS CRP readings indicate a high level of these adhesion molecules that high HS CRP readings are a strong and independent predictor of future heart attacks.)

It seems the adhesion molecules are proteins that cause white blood cells to stick to the walls of your arteries -- which is a direct cause of the build up of plaque on your artery walls which then causes high blood pressure and reduced circulation and heart attacks and strokes.

So that means that drinking or ingesting cocoa or dark chocolate directly reduced this cause of heart disease.

Even better, they also found the cocoa drinking group had increases in their HDL levels.

The study is in the November, 2009 issue of the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

The author of the article also said that other research has found that it likely is the polyphenols in the chocolate that has these beneficial effects.

Even better, she then lists a substantial number of foods that are likely to be heart protective from their high content of polyphenols -- and eating or drinking them will have similar effects from the polyphenols they contain.

They include red wine, tea, green tea, & coffee.

They include broccoli and onions.

Her list also has apples which, in addition to polyphenols, have soluble fiber that lowers high LDL cholesterol.

The other fruits she lists are quite high in polyphenols; & eating them has been found to increase HDL levels; & those were blueberries, blackberries, cherries, strawberries, plums and red grapes.

The author got her list from Connie Diekman, Director of University Nutrition at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri.

The researchers believed that the anti-inflammatory effects from cocoa may actually be less than many of these other foods rich in polyphenols provide.

The article also points out that the people who got the extra cocoa every day gained a bit of weight.

That makes adding nonstarchy vegetables such as the broccoli and onions and the low glycemic apples to your diet such a good way to balance getting unsweetened cocoa or dark chocolate into your diet more often. Those foods tend to make you less hungry for far more fattening foods and have very few calories themselves.

Lastly, every one of these foods and drinks has other health benefits as well.