Cocoa 'Vitamin' Health Benefits Could Outshine Penicillin

Science Daily — The health benefits of epicatechin, a compound found in cocoa, are so striking that it may rival penicillin and anaesthesia in terms of importance to public health, reports Marina Murphy in Chemistry & Industry, the magazine of the SCI. Norman Hollenberg, professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, told C&I that epicatechin is so important that it should be considered a vitamin.

Hollenberg has spent years studying the benefits of cocoa drinking on the Kuna people in Panama. He found that the risk of 4 of the 5 most common killer diseases: stroke, heart failure, cancer and diabetes, is reduced to less then 10% in the Kuna. They can drink up to 40 cups of cocoa a week. Natural cocoa has high levels of epicatechin.

'If these observations predict the future, then we can say without blushing that they are among the most important observations in the history of medicine,' Hollenberg says. 'We all agree that penicillin and anaesthesia are enormously important. But epicatechin could potentially get rid of 4 of the 5 most common diseases in the western world, how important does that make epicatechin?... I would say very important'

Nutrition expert Daniel Fabricant says that Hollenberg's results, although observational, are so impressive that they may even warrant a rethink of how vitamins are defined. Epicatechin does not currently meet the criteria. Vitamins are defined as essential to the normal functioning, metabolism, regulation and growth of cells and deficiency is usually linked to disease. At the moment, the science does not support epicatechin having an essential role. But, Fabricant, who is vice president scientific affairs at the Natural Products Association, says: 'the link between high epicatechin consumption and a decreased risk of killer disease is so striking, it should be investigated further. It may be that these diseases are the result of epicatechin deficiency,' he says.

Currently, there are only 13 essential vitamins. An increase in the number of vitamins would provide significant opportunity for nutritional companies to expand their range of products. Flavanols like epicatechin are removed for commercial cocoas because they tend to have a bitter taste. So there is huge scope for nutritional companies to develop epicatechin supplements or capsules

Epicatechin is also found in teas, wine, chocolate and some fruit and vegetables.

[Chemistry & Industry magazine (http://www.chemind.org) from SCI delivers news and comment from the interface between science and business. As well as covering industry and science, it focuses on developments that will be of significant commercial interest in five- to ten-years time. Published twice-monthly and free to SCI Members, it also carries authoritative features and reviews. Opinion-formers worldwide respect Chemistry & Industry for its independent insight.]

March 12, 2007

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Cocoa, but Not Tea, Lowers Blood Pressure

News Author: Shelley Wood
CME Author: Désirée Lie, MD, MSEd

April 11, 2007 — More happy justification for chocolate lovers: blood pressure (BP) responds favorably to cocoa, but not tea, a new meta-analysis suggests. Authors of the study say that while both products are rich in polyphenols, the study findings suggest that phenols in cocoa may be more active than those in tea. The study appears in the April 9 issue of the Archives of Internal Medicine.

"Products rich in cocoa may be considered part of a blood pressure lowering diet, provided that the total energy intake does not increase," lead investigator for the study, Dirk Taubert, MD, PhD, from the University Hospital of Cologne in Cologne, Germany, told heartwire. "I believe that cocoa is healthier than other sugar confectionary or high-fat dairy products."
Cocoa Beats Tea for BP

For their study, Taubert and colleagues conducted a literature search for randomized parallel group or crossover studies evaluating the effects of cocoa products or black or green tea for at least 7 days. They identified 10 studies that met their inclusion criteria: 5 randomized trials evaluated cocoa consumption (median, 2 weeks of cocoa consumption) in a total of 173 subjects and 5 trials evaluated tea consumption in a total of 343 subjects (in whom tea consumption was measured for a median of 4 weeks). In both analyses, study participants were evenly split between active and control groups. In the cocoa studies, cocoa consumption was typically flavonol-rich chocolate in the range of 100 g per day; in the tea studies, consumption was in the range of 4 to 6 cups daily.

In the cocoa studies, systolic BP (SBP) and diastolic BP (DBP) dropped in the active group as compared with controls; however, in the tea studies, no differences were seen in BP between the 2 groups. The authors point out that while the 2 substances contain similar amounts of polyphenols, the components of these polyphenols differ between cocoa and tea: cocoa is particularly rich in procyanidins, whereas black and green tea are rich in flavanols and gallic acid. It may be that the polyphenol components in cocoa are more bioavailable, Taubert and colleagues propose.

In the analysis, cocoa lower systolic blood pressure almost 5mm (4.7) and lowered diastolic blood pressure by an average of nearly 3mm (2.8). Tea had no measurable effect.

According to Taubert and colleagues, the effects of cocoa on SBP and DBP were comparable to those achieved with antihypertensive drugs. "The magnitude of the hypotensive effects of cocoa is clinically noteworthy; it is in the range that is usually achieved with monotherapy of β-blockers or angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitors," they write. "At the population level, a reduction of 4 to 5 millimeters of mercury in SBP and 2 to 3 millimeters of mercury in DBP would be expected to substantially reduce the risk of stroke (by about 20%), coronary heart disease (by 10%), and all-cause mortality (by 8%)."

Dr. Taubert acknowledged to heartwire that studies of tea and cocoa have yielded contradictory results. "The inconsistencies may result from differences in research question and research focus," he said. For example, "the reported effects of polyphenols on blood pressure, endothelial function, or platelet aggregation may be caused by different mechanisms and different phenols. The transient effects observed after administration of single phenol doses may be differentiated from the sustained effects observed after multiple daily doses. Moreover, plant foods like cocoa or tea contain many different — 100 and more — phenol compounds, but so far, mechanistic studies have focused on the flavonol monomers catechin and epicatechin, for which significant bioavailability has been demonstrated. But these may not be the active ingredients as our meta-analysis indicates."

Dr. Taubert believes his study "will not put the debate to rest, but foster a new debate and, more important, new research in this field."

Arch Intern Med. 2007;167:626-634.