Drinking this sweet drink daily can do wonders for your heart health

A cup of cocoa a day may make you smarter and now may keep you alive longer it turns out.

Recently, Ladders covered the health benefits associated with cocoa consumption, as per Mark Langowski’s new book, Eat This, Not That! For Abs!. Now the authors of a new study published in the journal, Nutrients posit that flavonoids ( plant compounds found in a variety of fruits and beverages) can reduce mental stress-induced stroke, heart disease, and thrombosis in routine consumers.

After the researchers from the University of Birmingham behind the report recruited a randomized sample pool comprised of healthy young adult men, they were able to successfully link cocoa intake with “faster and greater brain oxygenation responses” when cognitive demand is high.

“Cocoa flavanols protect humans against vascular disease, as evidenced by improvements in peripheral endothelial function, likely through nitric oxide signaling. Emerging evidence also suggests that flavanol-rich diets protect against cognitive aging, but mechanisms remain elusive,” the authors wrote in the new paper.

“These data support the hypothesis that similar vascular mechanisms underlie both the peripheral and cerebral effects of flavanols. They further show the importance of studies combining physiological and graded cognitive challenges in young adults to investigate the actions of dietary flavanols on brain function.”

The study sample was administered a high-flavanol cocoa beverage 90 minutes before completing an eight-minute mental stress task.

The authors subsequently measured forearm blood flow and cardiovascular activity at rest and then again during stress.

The final analysis assessed the functionality of the participant’s blood vessels for up to 90 min post-stress. Consistently, the researchers found that blood vessel function was less impaired when the participants drank high-flavanol cocoa.

The author’s additionally provided an index of the healthiest flavonol sources: apples, black grapes, blackberries, cherries, raspberries, pears, pulses, green tea, and unprocessed cocoa in their diets.

“The findings reported here can have important future implications for using dietary strategies containing plant-derived flavanols for enhancement of blood oxygenation and cognitive performance in healthy populations, as well as for populations at higher risk (e.g., smokers; hypertensives; diabetics; older adults) or help recover and treat brain injuries and disease,” the authors concluded.

“Most importantly, our data can potentially open new avenues for precision medicine research with regard to understanding individual responses to flavonol intake and helping to identify populations that might benefit the most from these interventions.”