Like most of you I love chocolate, but did you know good chocolate is heart healthy plus has a host of other benefits? It was noticed in the 1600's that it reduced angina and heart pain...
I am not talking about the run of the mill chocolate from Coles or Woolies here. Milk chocolate particularly is full of sugar, and often that is high fructose corn syrup, a known cause of health problems. And often too it is "Dutch' processed. To make the chocolate dark and get rid of the acid/bitter taste an alakali is added. In fact lots of "dark" choclates are just dutched and have added sugar to boot...
Result? A sticky mess that clogs your arteries because it is so high in fat and sugar!!! However, there is "real" chocolate available that can deliver real health benefits...
In fact, the list of our cocoa beans health lifting powers just keeps growing. Research indicates that its active ingredients can help the following conditions '
- High blood pressure - Stroke - Clogged arteries - Heart disease - Infectious diseses - Dementia - Prostate and lung cancer - Blood clots - Liver problems - Inflammation - Allergies - Asthma
There is another benefit researchers have discovered. As you may know one of the big problems with type II diabetes is the way it cuts down blood circulation to extremities. When I was in the heart ward of the Gold Coast Hospital for nine days back in early 2006, I was amazed at how bad the legs and feet of some of those blokes were. (Most were diabetes sufferers and they were in there with heart problems as a result). A couple of them were looking at amputations according to the doctors, on top of all their other problems. Yuk. My ears pricked up when I heard of a new study published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology discovered that cocoa significantly enhances blood flow in folks with type II diabetes (Balzer et al. "Sustained Benefits in Vascular Function Through Flavanol-Containing Cocoa in Medicated Diabetic Patients: A Double-Masked, Randomized, Controlled Trial." Journal of the American College of Cardiology. 2008. 51:2141-2149) In that study, researchers divided diabetes sufferers into 2 groups - one group had 1000 mg of cocoa a day (in three doses a day) and the other 25 mg. At the end of one month, the higher cocoa groups circulation had normalised (from "severly impaired") while the low cocoa group had no changes.
Source : articlesbase
No comments:
Post a Comment