(NaturalNews) A growing body of research is emerging to show that eating chocolate really can lower your blood pressure.
Researchers
have suspected for many years that chocolate may have a beneficial
effect on blood pressure, ever since discovering that the indigenous
Kuna people of the Central American island San Blas have normal blood
pressure well into old age. One of the major lifestyle differences
between the traditional Kuna and their urban relatives, scientists
found, is that the traditional Kuna drink enormous quantities of
essentially unprocessed cocoa.
Laboratory studies later confirmed
that a group of naturally occurring chocolate chemicals called
flavanols may have a beneficial effect on blood pressure. Scientists
believe that flavanols cause nitric oxide to form in the body, which in
turn relaxes and opens the blood vessels.
But until recently,
there has been little experimental evidence to suggest that benefit can
be gained simply from eating the processed chocolate sold in the United
States.
Then in August 2012, researchers from the National Institute of Integrative Medicine in Melbourne, Australia and the University of Adelaide published a research review in The Cochrane Library finding that people who consumed more chocolate or cocoa really do have lower blood pressure.
The
researchers reviewed the results of 20 separate studies involving a
total of 856 people who were fed between three and 100 grams of
chocolate or cocoa powder each day, containing between 30 and 1,080 mg
of total flavanols. All the studies lasted between two and eight weeks,
except for one that lasted 18 weeks.
On average, participants who consumed the chocolate
lowered their blood pressure by two to three mmHg compared with
participants given placebos. In trials where the placebo group consisted
of people fed flavanol-free chocolate, the relative blood pressure
decrease in the experimental group was even greater (three to four
mmHg).
"Although we don't yet have evidence for any sustained decrease in blood pressure,
the small reduction we saw over the short term might complement other
treatment options and might contribute to reducing the risk of
cardiovascular disease," lead researcher Karin Ried said.
Large observational study
Further evidence comes from a large longitudinal study conducted by researchers from the German Institute of Human Nutrition and published in the European Heart Journal
in March 2010. Researchers collected dietary information on 19,357
people, all of whom were between the ages of 35 and 65, had no history
of heart attack or stroke and were not taking blood
pressure drugs. They found that patients who consumed the most
chocolate (an average of 7.5 grams per day) had blood pressure about one
mmHg lower than participants who ate the least (an average of 1.7 grams
per day).
In the eight years following the study, the
researchers found that participants who had the most chocolate were
significantly less likely to suffer from heart attacks or strokes, and
that differences in blood pressure accounted for 12 percent of this
risk.
"Chocolate consumption appears to lower cardiovascular
disease risk, in part through reducing blood pressure," the researchers
wrote.
Source: naturalnews
