Your heart loves chocolate

With Christmas fast approaching, the Lab News team are looking forward to the mountain of chocolate that accompanies the festive period – even more so now researchers have shown exactly how it protects against cardiovascular disease.

The health benefits of chocolate have been widely discussed – but don’t forget it’s got to be dark chocolate and in small quantities. Now researchers from Linköping University in Sweden have discovered 75g of chocolate can inhibit the enzyme ACE, results which are comparable to the effects of drugs currently used to treat high blood pressure.

“We have previously shown that green tea inhibits the enzyme ACE, which is involved in the body’s fluid balance and blood pressure regulation,” said drug researcher Ingrid Persson, “We wanted to study the effect of cocoa, since the active substances catechins and procyanidines are related.”

The researcher recruited 16 healthy volunteers – 10 men and six women aged between 20 and 45 – who were not tobacco users. They were not allowed to take pharmaceuticals for two weeks, and during the last two days were not allowed to eat chocolate or anything containing similar compounds – berries, fruit, tea coffee and wine.

Each volunteer ate 75g of unsweetened chocolate with a cocoa content of 72%, and had their blood taken in advance, and then half an hour, an hour and three hours afterwards. In the sample taken three hours afterwards, there was a significant inhibition of ACE activity – the average was 18% lower activity than before the cocoa dose, comparable to the effects of currently used drugs that inhibit ACE.

“Our findings indicate that changes in lifestyle with the help of foods that contain large concentrations of catechins and procyaninides prevent cardiovascular disease.” Persson said.