Chocolate’s boost for blood flow
Cocoa flavanols pill proven to benefit blood vessel elasticity
DO YOUR hands sometimes feel numb or cold? Are your feet, ankles and legs puffy and do you find it harder to concentrate?
Poor blood flow could be the cause, but powerful evidence has now emerged that chocolate (right) could be the answer.
The findings of the study — carried out at King’s College London and published in the prestigious American Journal of Clinical Nutrition — is the best indication so far that chemicals called flavanols, found in chocolate, could be the right choice for people looking to maintain normal blood flow.
Narrowing of the arteries causes high blood pressure, which now affects one in four adults and 70 per cent of people over the age of 65.
It also results in cold or swollen extremities because not enough warm blood can reach the hands and feet. The study involved a month-long comparison of blood pressure readings in healthy men aged 18 to 35.
Those taking a high dose of cocoa flavanols experienced positive results, which supports European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) claims that the compounds contribute to normal blood flow.
However, the lecturer in nutrition who led the study, Dr Ana Rodriguez-Mateos, warns: ‘You would have to eat huge quantities of chocolate to get this level of flavanols, and even if you tried you’d be cancelling out any benefit by eating vast amounts of extra fat and sugar at the same time.’ This is an issue, as poor diet is making high blood pressure more common.
A Cambridge supplement company has now solved the conundrum by creating a calorie-free way to boost circulation with a supplement that contains these cocoa flavanols.
A regular daily dose of this ‘ chocolate pill’ contains the same amount of cocoa flavanols as 400g of high-quality cocoa chocolate, equivalent to 2,429 calories.
Professor Alf Lindberg, former secretary to the committee of the Nobel prize for medicine or physiology, said: ‘We are delighted that it is the first cocoa flavanol product officially allowed to claim it benefits blood vessel elasticity.’ y