| Departments — Benchmarks | Winter 2007 |
Marshmallows Optional  A major problem facing Americans and Europeans is the dangerous rise in blood pressure with age, increasing their risk of heart disease and diabetic complications. Kuna Indians living off the Caribbean coast of Panama don’t have that problem. Norman Hollenberg, an HMS professor of radiology at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, is convinced that it’s because they drink more than five cups of cocoa a day. In research published in January in the International Journal of Medical Sciences, Hollenberg reports that Kuna who continue drinking cocoa in their home islands enjoy much lower death rates from heart attacks, stroke, diabetes, and cancer than those who move to mainland cities and suburbs. Hollenberg used natural cocoa in his experiments. This substance is chockfull of flavanols, anti-oxidant compounds found in cocoa beans. Sadly for chocolate lovers, getting cocoa out of nature and into a box on a shelf removes much of the flavanols. Kuna cocoa has been found to be richer in flavanols than any cocoa product now available in the United States or Western Europe. Surprisingly, laboratory tests also showed that Kuna cocoa stimulates the body to produce nitric oxide, a notorious compound present in cigarette smoke and automobile exhausts. Nitric oxide, though, has a good side, as a component in an internal regulatory system that, among other actions, relaxes the blood vessels to allow an increased flow of blood and oxygen to the heart, brain, and other organs. Hollenberg believes that flavanols somehow activate a gene or genes that make nitric oxide. Hollenberg conducted experiments in which healthy people who were at least 50 years old drank flavanol-rich cocoa. Blood flow increased in these subjects just the way it did when he administered the same type of test to healthy young people, leading Hollenberg to speculate that flavanol-rich cocoa may be a valuable addition to treatments for conditions such as stroke and so-called vascular dementia, both of which involve restricted flow of blood to the brain. He envisions new types of flavanol drugs being developed for treating type 2 diabetes and preeclampsia. The latter is a serious condition that affects about 7 percent of pregnant women in developed countries and more than twice that number in some African nations. Among Kuna women, however, preeclampsia is rare. William J. Cromie is a staff writer for the Harvard University Gazette. Photo: © istockphoto.com/richvintage |
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