Cocoa Offers Health Benefits

Cocoa Offers Health Benefits…  In the past 6 months, cocoa research has reached the tipping point. Two independent studies from Harvard have arrived at the same conclusion: Cocoa is a superfood when it comes to cardiovascular and metabolic health. According to two new back-to-back studies conducted by separate teams of Harvard researchers, cocoa improves blood pressure, endothelial health, cholesterol levels, and reduces the metabolic precursors leading to heart disease.

The most recent Harvard study, published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition (January 2012) found consistent benefits of chocolate or cocoa on Flow-mediated dilatation (FMD) and previously unreported promising effects on insulin and HOMA-IR. A 2011 Harvard meta-analysis by Dr. Eric Ding and published in the Journal of Nutrition with 2,575 participants showed that cocoa consumption is associated with decreased blood pressure, improved blood vessel health, and improvement in cholesterol levels, among other benefits. In addition to decreasing blood pressure and improving blood vessel health, consumption of flavonoid-rich cocoa decreased “bad” LDL cholesterol among people under age 50 and increased good HDL cholesterol. Flavonoid-rich cocoa consumption also was linked to reductions in risk factors for diabetes, a major contributor to cardiovascular disease. Also, resistance to the hormone insulin, which helps regulate blood sugar, favorably dropped among people who consumed flavonoid-rich cocoa, compared to controls.
Researchers from the University of Cambridge in England recently published solid evidence to demonstrate that consumption of chocolate is associated with improved heart and vascular health. Writing in the prestigious BMJ (British Medical Journal), Dr. Oscar Franco and his team found that the antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties of cocoa from chocolate consumption could reduce heart disease risk by one-third and also reduce the risk of sudden death from a heart attack and the incidence of stroke. The study included an analysis of seven detailed research bodies that included more than 114,000 participants. All studies independently pointed to the conclusion that different levels of chocolate consumption were associated with a substantial reduction in the risk of cardio-metabolic disorders.
Dr. Eric Ding of Harvard Medical School says that, “The convergence of such credible evidence from so many independent sources in a short period of time is a rare occurrence,” and has inspired him to describe the phenomenon as a veritable “tipping point on cocoa’s extraordinary health benefits.”