Cocoa shown to reduce blood pressure and arterial stiffness in real-life study | Hacker News Reader

Cocoa shown to reduce blood pressure and arterial stiffness in real-life study

surrey.ac.uk

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Instructions unclear, have developed expensive drug habit and high blood pressure.

Can you expand on this? Which instructions are you referring to?

It's a meme https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/instructions-unclear

Coca and cocoa are two different substances.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9234529/

> CF capsules (862 mg CF)

I'm guessing that if you drink cocoa instead of taking cocoa flavenol pills, the sugar and other ingredients probably negate the effect.

You can easily make sugar free hot cocoa. Just use 100% cocoa powder, a little bit of coconut cream and monk fruit extract.

Monkfruit gives me horrible.. internal effects. Not workable, unfortunately. Ymmv.

Are you sure it was 100% monkfruit extract? A lot of the “monkfruit extract” products out there also include other stuff like xylitol or stevia which also gives me stomach issues. 100% monkfruit extract has not given me issues though.

Just milk and cacao powder is good too, though both milk and coconut cream contains some sugar.

I also add turmeric and cinnamon. There's always a bit of sludge at the bottom.

I use coconut cream, instead of bulletproof-style coconut oil, because I need my morning coffee to be somewhat palatable.

My understanding is that Cocoa has a lot of oxalate in it, so maybe be careful / do your research / ask doctor before consuming a lot of it.

I'm more wondering how much actual chocolate you have to consume to get 862mg of flavanols.

On the other hand, as pointed out by the study, these are flavanol supplements purchased from Amazon (Mars/CocoaVia brand). A quick look at US Amazon shows this being quite expensive though (IMO).

Interesting.

I believe, but cannot prove, that dark chocolate is a cough suppressant. Dark meaning bittersweet, 70%+ chocolate.

I had whooping cough (as an adult). Theo Chocolate seemed to help take the edge off. Probably just placebo or self-soothing or whatever. But ever since, dark chocolate is part of my remedy regiment whenever I have a respiratory issue.

Per this paper, if I'm onto something, maybe the flavanols also relax other muscles, bronchia, or whatever, too.

Could be the theobromine in chocolate.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theobromine

Theobromine is useful in asthma and in other respiratory tract problems such as cough for which no definitive drug has been developed.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4335269/

If so, isn’t consuming Cacao powder a better option than consuming Cocoa powder or chocolate?

What's the difference between cacao powder and cocoa powder? Aren't they the same thing?

Cacao powder is powdered raw cacao beans. Cocoa powder is post some processing before it makes into chocolate.

One, of many, articles describing the difference: https://www.forbes.com/health/body/cacao-vs-cocoa/

The article you linked talks about cacao being the raw bean and cocoa being the processed powder. It also says you can get cacao from chocolate bars. I don't think there is a difference between cocoa powder and cacao powder.

> “Think of cacao, cocoa and chocolate like a pipeline,” says Fazio. “Cacao [fruit] grows from a tree and is raw and unprocessed. It’s the precursor to cocoa, and cocoa is the precursor to chocolate.”

> “The taste of cacao is earthy and bitter, and it has a grittier mouthfeel than chocolate,” says Fazio. “Cocoa powder tastes more like chocolate than cacao, but it doesn’t have a creamy mouthfeel either because most of the cocoa butter has been removed.”

> Some experts use “cacao” for the pods, beans and ground-up contents of the beans, reserving “cocoa” for the powder left after pressing the fat out of the ground beans (1Trusted Source).

Cacao powder is the powder of raw beans, before any processing.

Cocoa is post processing, in the way to make chocolate.

It might be best for you to purchase both and taste. Cocoa tastes like chocolate, Cacao is kinda earthy and bitter. They cannot be substituted for each other in recipes.

Cacao beans are 54% fat, I don't think you'll get a powder if you just grind them, you'd get some sort of mush.

In my country there isn't even a thing called cocoa, it's all cacao with a k, kakao. Kakao beans, kakao powder etc. There is something called cocholate powder which is kakao powder mixed with milk powder and sugar, but I don't think that's what you are talking about.

I might buy some raw kakao/cacao beans to see what happens if I crush them.

“Eleven healthy participants” — how is this being extrapolated as a general benefit? The conclusion that it helps only if blood pressure is high and that it doesn’t cause any issues if blood pressure is normal or low seems like a stretch.

Note that this doesn't mean you can start eating chocolate with 30% simple sugars. Just cocoa with hot water, no sugar. Maybe a bit of milk, but not much since it has simple sugars as well.

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