Cocoa, heart and arterial health, & neuropathy

Cocoa’s antioxidant, a newly discovered flavonol called epicatechin, releases a substance called nitric oxide from artery walls. Epicatechin was only discovered and named in late 2008, causing great excitement among  medical researchers.

Why all the excitement about nitric oxide? In a word: vasodilation. Nitric oxide dilates arteries in seconds, lowering blood pressure and allowing more oxygen and nutrients to reach every organ and tissue, including your heart, brain, skin, eyes (vision), kidneys, legs, hands and feet. This helps to prevent heart disease and strokes, Peripheral Arterial Disease, peripheral neuropathy, and retinal arterial disease.

Research published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology provides substantial evidence that pure cocoa’s flavonols greatly improve the health of narrowed blood vessels. “Patients who drank the high-flavonol cocoa for one month had their blood vessel function improve from severely impaired to normal. This research focuses on what's at the heart of the discussion on “healthy” chocolate -- it's about cocoa flavonols, the naturally occurring compounds in cocoa in the prevention of cardiovascular complications in diabetic patients."

But -- how to turn that pure cocoa into brownies, cookies, cakes, muffins and the rest? First mix it with protein powder. Then add a few other ingredients, including hugely healthy milled flaxseed.

And then use a whole new technique for cooking and baking which you will find in The New Diabetes Diet: Control At Last, available on Amazon.com.

Good brands of pure cocoa: Hershey’s (little brown box in bakery aisles),  Trader Joes (U.S.) or Amazon.com if not locally. Make sure your cocoa is not Dutch Processed, aka alkalinized. Alkalinization destroys the antioxidants.