Go with flow and boost your body
COLD hands, warm heart: that’s how the saying goes. Yet if you find yourself suffering from cold hands – and feet too – at this time of year, your body could be telling you that your circulation needs a little extra help. Christmas might have gone but there’s still a treat in store with a chocolate-based diet supplement to do exactly that – BLOOD FLOW+, the creation of Cambridge supplement specialist Future You.
With poor circulation, blood doesn’t flow freely around the body.
Poor diet, lack of exercise and unhealthy habits such as smoking can be the cause as they can lead to a narrowing and stiffening of the arteries.
Organs such as the heart and brain may not get the nutrients or oxygen they need to function properly.
This can lead to a host of problems, including cold extremities, muscle cramps and – if left untreated – more serious cardiovascular problems.
One way to boost circulation is a change of diet and plenty of exercise. Another is to increase the body’s natural amounts of nitric oxide, which helps artery walls relax, allowing the blood to flow more easily and get oxygen and nutrients to the important organs.
Certain foods such as avocados, spinach and garlic can increase nitric oxide but perhaps the best are cocoa flavanols.
Dark chocolate is packed with them and research by the Royal Society of Chemistry confirms their benefits.
BLOOD FLOW+ contains these flavanols. It’s been called ‘the chocolate pill’ and has been officially recognised by the European
Food Safety Authority following studies which show that the highly purified cocoa flavanols contribute to the flexibility of blood vessels and help to maintain healthy blood flow.
EACH easy-to-take BLOOD FLOW+ capsule contains the equivalent flavanols to 400g of 70 per cent cocoa dark chocolate. That’s the recommended daily amount of cocoa flavanols – and to get them by eating 400g of chocolate would mean 2,429 calories and 329 per cent of the daily recommended allowance of fat.
“We believe this is the way forward,” says Professor Alf Lindberg, former secretary to the committee of the Nobel Prize for Medicine, and now a member of the FutureYou medical board.
“Maintaining the elasticity of blood vessels is very important.
“Even slightly elevated blood pressure in midlife is linked to increased health risks.
“A huge amount of research has gone into BLOOD FLOW+ and we are delighted that it is the first cocoa flavanol product officially allowed to claim it benefits blood vessel elasticity.”