Follow the CHOCOLATE brick road?!
This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science.
You’re stressed. Your HEART is a traffic jam. Artery flow is at a crawl. Is there a shortcut outta this gridlock? Or at least a superfood?
HMM…Cocoa contains heart healthy molecules called flavanols! YUM.
To test flavanols against stress, Rosalind Baynham and team at University of Birmingham recruited thirty volunteers. First, they measured their forearm blood flow and artery width. Next, participants drank either high-flavanol or low-flavanol cocoa.
Then… LIGHTNING ROUND! Non-stop mental math for eight minutes! PHEEEUW!
Blood flow and arteries are measured again.
Results? High-flavanol cocoa IMPROVED blood flow during stress! Subjects’ arteries widened – like adding lanes to a freeway.
Now we’re off to the races! With high-flavanol… synthetic… cardiac stabilizing… CHOCOLATE! From the gas station.
Reference: Baynham, R., Veldhuijzen Van Zanten, J. J., Johns, P. W., Pham, Q. S., & Rendeiro, C. (2021). Cocoa Flavanols Improve Vascular Responses to Acute Mental Stress in Young Healthy Adults. Nutrients, 13(4), 1103. https://doi.org/10.3390/nu13041103