Posted on 02/27/2006 10:48:48 PM PST by cgk
By CARLA K. JOHNSON, Associated Press WriterMon Feb 27, 4:44 PM ET
Leave it to the Dutch to help demonstrate the health benefits of chocolate. A study of older men in The Netherlands, known for its luscious chocolate, indicated those who ate the equivalent of one-third of a chocolate bar every day had lower blood pressure and a reduced risk of death.
The researchers say, however, it's too early to conclude it was chocolate that led to better health. The men who ate more cocoa products could have shared other qualities that made them healthier. Experts also point out that eating too much chocolate can make you fat — a risk for both heart disease and high blood pressure.
"It's way too early to make recommendations about whether people should eat more cocoa or chocolate," said Brian Buijsse, a nutritional epidemiologist at Wageningen University in The Netherlands, who co-authored the study.
Still, the Dutch study, supported by grants from the Netherlands Prevention Foundation, appears to be the largest so far to document a health effect for cocoa beans. And it confirms findings of smaller, shorter-term studies that also linked chocolate with lower blood pressure.
The findings, published in Monday's Archives of Internal Medicine, are based on data collected for more than a decade on Dutch men who were ages 65 and older in 1985. The long-running Zutphen Elderly Study has been used by other researchers to look for risk factors for chronic disease.
This time, researchers examined the eating habits of 470 healthy men who were not taking blood pressure medicine. The men who ate the most products made from cocoa beans — including cocoa drinks, chocolate bars and chocolate pudding — had lower blood pressure and a 50 percent lower risk of death.
Cocoa beans contain flavanols, which are thought to increase nitric oxide in the blood and improve the function of blood vessels.
"This is a very important article providing epidemiological support for what many researchers have been observing in experimental models," said Cesar Fraga of the University of California Davis, who does similar research but was not involved in the new study.
Buijsse noted the men eating the most cocoa products were not heavier or bigger eaters than the men who ate less cocoa.
Could the study results apply to women?
"Our study consisted of elderly men," Buijsse said. "If you look at the other interventional studies, you see the same effects in men and women, younger people and older people. It may be the findings are generalizable to women, but you never know."
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its basic physics, eating chocolate adds more volume, and with the same amount of liquid occupying more volume; the liquid blood pressure becomes less.
Research recently published in the British Medical Journal suggested that a daily meal of seven ingredients, which included 100g dark chocolate (along with fish, fruit, vegetables, almonds, garlic and 150ml wine) could cut the risk of coronary heart disease by a massive 76%.
Not sure why this was moved to chat. This story is on the Front Page of every news source I looked at.
Maybe this is why I am now with low blood pressure which once was with high blood pressure, addicted to Chocolate and having it for dessert often. No one is going to call it junk food anymore... probably.
I remember posting an article which a flying frozen sausage broked someone's nose while driving. I wonder if that ever went to the chat section.
Just seems to me like cgk posts a lot of legitimate news stories that get moved to chat, and I'm wondering why. I would hate to think that there are moderators who are censoring her.
I honestly don't remember where I posted this one (late, tired!) I had just posted a prev. article on staph infections and I thought I posted THAT one in chat: health, but it's in news. Color me confused.
Still up in "Top Stories" on AP. Second day.
I found it as the "most e-mailed story" on Yahoo. I was pretty surprised by it... I knew chocolate was good for you in certain ways, but this one was an eye-opener :)
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I just knew if I was patient enough, I'd eventually have a semi-legitimate reason to post this picture. |
Eat your heart out, LOL!
good news gabz your going to live forever after all :-)
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