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Another Cocoa Study Shows Positive Effects on Hypertension

Here’s a study from The Journal of the American Medical Association that shows that cocoa, or more specifically, the polyphenols in cocoa, has a positive effect on blood pressure. It points out several important facts:

It doesn’t need to be a huge quantity of dark chocolate to have an effect
The dark chocolate must be taken regularly
It must [...]

Pills or Food?

My personal feeling has been that eating a food, as close to nature as possible, is better than taking a pill of concentrated essence of whatever. The article below lends credence to that view.

CTV.ca | Antioxidant pills don’t prevent heart disease

The study, done at Brigham & Women’s hospital, followed 8,171 women with three or more risk [...]

Chocolate and Prevention of CVD

Nutrition & Metabolism | Full text | Chocolate and Prevention of Cardiovascular Disease: A Systematic Review

I came across the study above a while ago, but am just getting around to mentioning it in this blog. This study is not primary research, but rather a review of all MEDLINE publications from 1966 through January 2005 looking for [...]

Chocolate Sunscreen?

Sounds kinda gross. And wow, would the sand ever stick to you at the beach! Not really:-) This article says the preliminary results of a German study show that eating chocolate rich in cocoa solids and flavonoids (in other words, dark chocolate) can fight skin cancer. Subjects were given cocoa to drink. Half the group got [...]

Cocoa More Important than Penicillin?

Norman Hollenberg, a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School says that epicatechin, one of the flavonoids in cacao, has such powerful health benefits, it “may rival penicillin and anaesthesia in terms of importance to public health.” He thinks it is so important it should be considered a vitamin.

He has spent years studying the Kuna people [...]

Seven Steps to Fight Inflammation

I subscribe to a newsletter from Harvard Medical School. The most recent issue reminds us that inflammation, while an important part of our body’s healing system, can be dangerous, if there is too much of it. Inflammation is involved in atherosclerosis, heart disease, strokes and even some types of dementia. Below is a link to the [...]

Top 10 Veggies For Antioxidants

Recently I found an article on RealAge that lists the 10 top veggies for phytochemical and antioxidant content. You can find the article at the link below.

Top 10 Veggies List – RealAge Tip of the Day

From a list of the most widely consumed vegetables, the order was:

Broccoli
Spinach
Yellow onions
Red peppers
Carrots
Cabbage
Potatoes
Lettuce
Celery
Cucumbers

If you look at that list, you’ll realize [...]

Cacao May Stave Off Type 2 Diabetes

A Japanese study, whose results were printed in the journal Nutrition, Volume 23, Issue 4, pp 351-355 concludes that “dietary supplementation with CLPr can dose-dependently prevent the development of hyperglycemia in diabetic obese mice. The dietary intake of food or drinks produced from cacao beans might be beneficial in preventing the onset of type 2 diabetes [...]

Cocoa and the Immune System

The University of Barcelona reports that rats fed a cocoa-enriched diet had “significant increases in the total antioxidant capacity in all the body tissues, particularly in the thymus.” The article can be found at the link below.

Cocoa-rich diet may boost thymus antioxidant defences

A link to the abstract is here.

The amount of cocoa that was fed to [...]

Dark Chocolate May be as Good for Blood Pressure as Reducing Sodium Intake

Here’s an article about a German study that found that dark chocolate may have a small benefit on blood pressure.

Dark Chocolate a Comfort to Early Blood Pressure – Breaking Medical News + CME Teaching Brief® – MedPage Today

I imagine the dark chocolate that was used was still alkalized and processed. Wouldn’t it be great to find [...]