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Search |
A
Few Squares of Chocolate a Day
Keeps the Coronary Away
Some
"chocoholics" who just
couldn't give up their favorite treat to comply with a study to test
blood stickiness have inadvertently done their fellow chocolate lovers
- and science - a big favor.
Their "offense," say researchers at Johns Hopkins led to what is
believed to be the first biochemical analysis to explain why just a few
squares of chocolate a day can almost halve the risk of heart attack
death in some men and women by decreasing the tendency of platelets to
clot in narrow blood vessels.
|
"What these
chocolate
'offenders' taught us is that the chemical in cocoa beans has a
biochemical effect similar to aspirin in reducing platelet clumping,
which can be fatal if a clot forms and blocks a blood vessel, causing a
heart attack," says Diane Becker, M.P.H., Sc.D., a professor at the
Johns Hopkins University's School of Medicine and Bloomberg School of
Public Health.
Becker
cautions that her work is not intended as a prescription to gobble up
large amounts of chocolate candy, which often contains diet-busting
amounts of sugar, butter and cream. |
But as little as 2
tablespoons a day of dark chocolate - the purest form of the candy,
made from the dried extract of roasted cocoa beans - may be just what
the doctor ordered.
Researchers
have known for nearly two decades that dark chocolate, rich in
chemicals called flavonoids, lowers blood pressure and has other
beneficial effects on blood flow. The latest Johns Hopkins findings
identified the effect of normal, everyday doses of chocolate found in
ordinary foods, unlike previous studies that found decreased platelet
activity only at impractically high doses of flavonoids equivalent to
eating several pounds of chocolate a day.
|
"Eating
a little bit of chocolate or having a drink of hot cocoa as part of a
regular diet is probably good for personal health, so long as people
don't eat too much of it, and too much of the kind with lots of butter
and sugar," says Becker.
In
the study, 139 people Becker - whom Becker somewhat tongue in cheek
calls "chocolate offenders" - were disqualified from a much larger
study looking at the effects of aspirin on blood platelets. |
The Genetic
Study of Aspirin Responsiveness (GeneSTAR) was conducted at John
Hopkins from June 2004 to November 2005 and enrolled more than 500 men
and 700 women participants nationwide.
Shortly
before aspirin dosing began for the subjects, they were told to stay on
a strict regimen of exercise and to refrain from smoking or using foods
and drinks known to affect platelet activity. These included
caffeinated drinks, wine, grapefruit juice - and chocolate.
The
non-compliers - who admitted to eating chocolate - were a diverse group
who got their flavonoid "fix" from a variety of sources, including
chocolate bars, cups of hot cocoa, grapes, black or green tea, and
strawberries. And while they were excluded from the aspirin study,
Becker and her team scoured their blood results for chocolate's effect
on blood platelets, which the body recycles on a daily basis.
When
platelet samples from both groups were run through a mechanical blood
vessel system designed to time how long it takes for the platelets to
clump together in a hair-thin plastic tube, the chocolate lovers were
found to be less reactive, on average taking 130 seconds to occlude the
system. Platelets from those who stayed away from chocolate as
instructed clotted faster, at 123 seconds.
In
another key test of urine for waste products of platelet activity,
primarily urinary thromboxane (11-dehydro-thromboxane B2), scientists
found that chocolate eaters showed less activity and waste products on
average, at 177 nanograms per millimol of creatinine, versus an average
of 287 nanograms per millimol of creatinine in the group that abstained.
Participants
ranged in age from 21 to 80; 31 percent were black and the rest were
white. In total, more than 200 different tests of platelet reactivity
were performed and analyzed in the study. Because whole blood contains
other cells that affect platelet aggregation, testing was repeated
using a purified version of test samples made up of strictly
platelet-rich plasma.
None
of the "offenders" had previous histories of heart problems, such as a
heart attack, but all were considered to be at slightly increased risk
of heart disease because of family history. Fifty percent of women
participants were postmenopausal.
"These
results really bring home the point that a modest dietary practice can
have a huge impact on blood and potentially on the health of people at
a mildly elevated risk of heart disease," says study co-author Nauder
Faraday, M.D., an associate professor at Johns Hopkins. "But we have to
careful to emphasize that one single healthy dietary practice cannot be
taken alone, but must be balanced with exercise and other healthy
lifestyle practices that impact the heart."
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