Chocolate Really Can Help Your Heart, Study Shows

Good news for chocolate lovers. Looks like cocoa flavanoids (that’s one of the super-great antioxidants in chocolate) can help your heart.

Specifically, it seems that a high-level flavanol drink, consumed daily, will increase the levels of circulating angiogenic cells (CACs) in the bloodstream.  What the heck’s a CAC?  Hang on, I’ll explain.

Angiogenic Cells

The word “angiogenic” just means “makes new blood vessels”.  As the name implies, these are cells that float around through your body- your bloodstream, in particular- and build up and repair all of your various blood vessels.

You have a massive network of blood vessels in your body.  It’s actually pretty ridiculous, just how intricate and complex the circulatory system is.  Oh, sure, there’s some big, major vessels that everyone (at least, in the health care field) knows by name.  And even a few more that specialists can pick out and put a name to.  But there are nearly countless little branches and offshoots going into every little nook and cranny of the inside of your body.

I was at the Bodyworks exhibit- which is that exhibit of cadavers preserved in a special way and then posed so the public can see what internal anatomy looks like- and one of the presentations was all about the arteries of the head.  They basically filled up the arteries with a red resin and dissolved everything else away, leaving only the resin-filled arteries behind.  Now, this resin got into every tiny branch in this vascular network, and as a result, you could easily see the outline of the person’s face… even though all that was left was arteries.  That’s how intricate and ever-present the circulatory system is in the body.

Another way to look at it is like the network of roads criss-crossing our county.  There’s big ol’ highways, and then smaller offshoots, and then major surface streets, and then a progressively smaller tangle of smaller and smaller roads (and even driveways).  And just like all of those roads get potholes and dings and just plain wear out, so do your blood vessels.

That complex network of roads needs constant maintenance- a little here, a little there, oops, now that spot needs a little- or it will fall apart and become unusable.  Same thing goes for your blood vessels.  Except your body doesn’t have a bunch of fat guys in orange vests who stand around a pothole staring while one of them fills it on for five hours.

Instead, the body has angiogenic cells, which float around and do the metaphoric version of the DOT truck.  They find and fill potholes in your blood vessels.  But they do it pretty efficiently.

How Chocolate Helps The Heart

Okay, so, if flavanols from cocoa help increase the number of pothole-filling guys running around your blood vessels, why does that help your heart?

Simple.  Your heart needs blood too.

That may sound stupid- tons and tons of bloods shoot through the heart all of the time, how could it NEED blood?- but it’s not.  You see, the heart can’t use the blood that it pumps.  It doesn’t get delivered slowly and evenly enough throughout the tissue.

The easiest way to think of it is like a guy who’s sorting fish on a conveyor belt.  Sure, lots of food is shooting past him all of the time, but he can’t eat it.  It’s not cooked, it still the head on… and he might get fired for biting into his work.  So, he has to have lunch delivered, and eat that.

The heart works the same way.  It needs to have blood delivered to it to feed it- and it needs lots of it.  The good news is, it can eat while working, as long as the circulation stays consistent.

What all that means is, you’ve got to have a good blood supply to the heart, and that means blood vessels.  The reason why people drop dead from a heart attack is that the heart’s blood supply stops or dramatically decreases, and the heart starves.  This drop in blood supply is usually due to the blood vessels being in lousy shape.

So, if more repair guys are running around fixing blood vessels, and therefore making sure the heart’s blood vessels are in good working order, you’re less likely to keel over dead from a heart attack.  And, there’s research indicating that is indeed the case and that higher levels of angiogenic cells in the blood reduces the risk of heart attack.

Chocolate and The Heart

Let’s go over the particulars of this specific study.  The researchers give people one of two cocoa drinks:  one that was high-flavanol containing, one that was low-flavanol containing.  They chugged this stuff down twice a day for a month.

What they found, was that the flavanol-chuggers had twice the normal levels of angiogenic cells in their blood.  On top of that, they had a reduced systolic blood pressure (that’s the number on the top when somebody says something like 120/80).  Systolic blood pressure is the pressure when the heart squeezes, so it’s the top or maximum pressure- which is important when it comes to diseases like heart disease or stroke.

Finally, it seems to help what’s called flow mediated dilation– big words meaning the ability of the arterty to relax and allow enough blood to flow through.  Arteries actually have a muscular wall around them which determines the size of the hole blood can travel through, so if your arteries are having a tense day and can’t relax, not enough blood gets through to where it needs to be.

Using our road metaphor, you can think of it like a traffic cop who’s all hot and bothered and tense, and as a consequence, doesn’t let cars through the intersection.  If you chill that guy out, make him relaxed, he lightens up and lets the cars through more quickly.  Same idea.  And better blood flow is a healthy thing to have.

So, to sum up, it seems like the flavanols in chocolate help your heart by helping to fix potholes, reduce the maximum pressure, and relax the arteries so the traffic can get through.  And really, it’s helping the entire circulatory system, which will boost overall health in general- it isn’t just your heart that needs a good blood flow.

One note of caution with this study is that it was done by Mars, a chocolate manufacturer, so there may be a bias inherent in the study design or implementation.  Still, their results were consistent with previous research, and there weren’t any glaring design problems I could spot, so I’m still fairly confident their results are on the level.

Which is good news for my friend Kimberly Riggins (who loves her some healthy chocolate, just read her blog at http://kimberlyriggins.com and see) and really anybody else who digs chocolate, which, of course, is 90% of  people with a soul.

Comments or questions, please leave them below, and send this page link to anyone you know who needs an excuse to eat some chocolate.

Stay healthy!

Source: http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/193903.php