PERFECT A GREAT EXCUSE TO EAT CHOCOLATE

From the Daily Mail. One other fact about dark chocolate you may not know but one ounce of dark chocolate contains enough iron to meet your daily requirements, though remember it must be dark chocolate, milk chocolate does not.

Another excuse to eat chocolate: Dark variety can help heart-risk patients and cut diabetes

Lovers of dark chocolate have known for some time that their favourite treat can help protect them against high blood pressure and cut the risk of diabetes.

But now scientists say that it can even benefit those who are already at high risk of heart attacks and strokes.

Although regular chocolate eating doesn’t work quite as well as drugs, the researchers say it has virtually no side effects and, perhaps not surprisingly ‘high rates of compliance’.

Miracle food: Dark chocolate can benefit people who are already at high risk of heart attacks and strokes

A team of researchers from universities in Melbourne, Australia, used a mathematical model to predict the effects and cost effectiveness of daily dark chocolate consumption in 2,013 individuals at high risk of heart disease over a decade.

They all had metabolic syndrome – a mix of problems including raised blood pressure, obesity, high fat levels in the blood and an inability to control blood sugar levels – but no history of heart disease or diabetes and they were not on blood pressure drugs. 

Daily consumption of 100g of dark chocolate could potentially avert 70 non-fatal and 15 fatal cardiovascular events per 10,000 people treated over ten years, according to the study published on bmj.com.

This could be considered an effective intervention, said the researchers. It would be cost-effective too, costing £25 a year per head of population.

This would cover advertising and possible subsidising of dark chocolate for the less well-off.

The protective effects have been shown only for dark chocolate which is at least 60-70 per cent cocoa. Milk or white chocolate does have not provide the same benefits.

It is rich in flavonoids which are known to have heart protecting effects.

Sceptics say the high calorie content of chocolate tends to offset the benefits.

Previous research shows eating chocolate reduces blood pressure and improves insulin sensitivity, reducing the risk of diabetes.

Maggie Brown (Author)

Visit Amazon's Maggie Brown Page

Find all the books, read about the author, and more.

Top Stories

THE HEALTH BENEFITS OF TEA-IT CAN LOWER YOUR BLOOD PRESSURE

Story from the Daily Mail, this does not surprise me at all, given that the UK is a nation of Tea drinkers. Tea has this unique quality of being a adaptogen in that it refreshes you and yet relaxes you all at the same time, something that coffee cant do. Although it does contain caffeine its less than coffee and with milk added I find personally that it is a very comforting drink and regularly drink it at bedtime with no effects on my sleep unlike coffee. Tea contains valuable antioxidants which fight off the detrimental effects of free radicals, free radicals are substances, molecules found in the atmosphere that speed up ageing of the body's cells, so obviously anything that defies this ageing process must help the body's organs.

There is a correct way of making tea, and this is aimed at my US readers LOL! but to brew tea the water MUST be boiling and not just hot, otherwise the true flavour is lost.

Below my favourite brand and a little cult figure we have here promoting tea!

Drinking three cups of tea a day 'can lower your blood pressure'

It's good news for the two-thirds of Britons who have a cup of tea every day - enjoying a brew may significantly reduce your blood pressure.

Scientists at The University of Western Australia and Unilever discovered that drinking three cups of tea a day lowers systolic and diastolic blood pressure.

However, researchers based their findings on drinking black tea and the effect of drinking tea with milk is not known.



Heart disease cases could fall by up to 10 per cent if everyone drank three cups of black tea a day

Tea is the world's second-most popular drink, after water. It is full of polyphenols, antioxidants that have been shown to stop cancer cells from growing. Another study from Harvard University found the drink could boost immune function.

Now researchers have found more proof that it keeps the heart healthy.

Lead author Research Professor Jonathan Hodgson said: 'There is already mounting evidence that tea is good for your heart health, but this is an important discovery because it demonstrates a link between tea and a major risk factor for heart disease.'

Blood pressure measurement consists of two numbers. The first is the systolic and measures blood pressure when the heart beats, or contracts to push blood through the body. The second number is the diastolic and measures the amount of pressure in between beats, when the heart is at rest.

In the small study, 95 Australian participants aged between 35 and 75 were recruited to drink either three cups of black tea or a placebo with the same flavour and caffeine content, but not derived from tea.

After six months, the researchers found that compared with the placebo group, participants who drank black tea had a lower systolic and diastolic blood pressure of between 2 and 3 mmHg (millimetres of mercury).

The authors believe a 2 to 3mmHg drop in blood pressure across the board would lead to a 10 per cent drop in the number of people with hypertension and heart disease.

Dr Hodgson wrote: 'A large proportion of the general population has blood pressure within the range included in this trial, making results of the trial applicable to individuals at increased risk of hypertension.'

He added that more research is required to better understand how tea may reduce blood pressure, although earlier studies reported a link between tea drinking and the improved health of people's blood vessels.

The study is published this week in the Archives of Internal Medicine.

Maggie Brown (Author)

Visit Amazon's Maggie Brown Page

Find all the books, read about the author, and more.

Top Stories

WHAT WE SHOULD KNOW ABOUT SALT

We should all know by now how too much salt in our diet raises our blood pressure but have you stopped to ask how and what are the dangers?

Well our bodies are kept in balance by the Hypothalamus (An area in the brain its job is to maintain homeostasis within the body). It does this in a number of ways and its a bit akin to a laboratory constantly analysing our blood, checking if we have the correct amount of hormones, is the blood the right consistency, does it have the correct balance of salts to maintain body function. Salt, sodium chloride to give it its proper name is necessary along with other salts like Potassium are necessary for a variety of functions and nerve function being one of them. It is through the interaction between Potassium and Sodium that our nerves work and are able to pass signals down through our nerves from our brains to our muscles etc. If this balance is upset then our bodies won't work correctly.

Now if you are eating a high salt diet (Sodium) and you know what happens if you eat something very salty how do you feel? Very thirsty I shouldn't wonder and this is because the hypothalamus has noticed there is too much sodium in the blood, so the first thing it does is to alert the body and make us thirsty and cause us to drink more fluid in an effort to dilute the blood. At the same time the Hypothalamus  causes the  pituitary gland to release Vasopressin (Anti diuretic hormone) this is circulated in the blood stream and targets the kidneys not to filter out so much liquid in the blood as waste (Urine becomes more concentrated so you don't pass as much). These two actions generate more blood volume in an effort to dilute the concentration of Sodium (more liquid part of the blood).

Cue the heart, now your poor heart has more work to do, you've upped its work load putting more strain on it. You've still got the same amount of arteries and veins but have more liquid for your heart to pump through, this means your left Ventricle of your heart is under strain thus the action of forcing all this volume of fluid through the same amount of vessels raises the blood pressure. So first and foremost high blood pressure strains the heart and the heart being a muscle, like any other muscle will enlarge to cope with the work. Now the kidneys, they filter impurities and toxins out of the body through a series of tiny tubules called Nephrons, these tiny vessels are very delicate and only one cell thick and thus very fragile. With the raised pressure of all this excess fluid in the blood being forced harder through the circulation, these tiny vessels are easily damaged.

As we get older our arteries, which are a series of elastic muscular tubes, become less elastic, think of washing a pair of knickers hundreds of times eventually the elastic gets spent doesn't it? well its like this with the arteries. Because they have lost this elasticity they cannot cope so well with an increased blood pressure and if these arteries happen to be in the brain, the result can be a burst blood vessel hence one type of stroke. Now couple this with someone who has had a fatty diet eating lots of saturated fats. That fat circulates in the blood stream and just like a sink drain that gets blocked when you try to pour fat down it regularly, the same thing happens in an artery. Fat sticks to the artery walls forming plaques, blood cells become sticky and before you know it you have a clot forming. If this clot travels to the brain you have the other type of stroke. A stroke is where the brain is starved of oxygen because blood flow is restricted to an area and that area of the brain is damaged. If the clot forms in the leg we have a Deep Vein Thrombosis, if it forms in the lungs we have a Pulmonary Thrombosis and if we have a clot in the circulation of the heart we have a Coronary Thrombosis.  Obviously too furred up arteries will raise blood pressure too as the heart will have to work harder to push all that volume of blood through narrowed blood vessels.

So now you know why too much salt is bad for you and the worst culprits for harbouring salt are processed foods. Start reading labels and become familiar with recommended daily allowances, you may just save your health a whole lot of trouble

In the UK, the Recommended Daily Allowance (RDA) of Salt is 6 grams for an adult, 1 gram for a baby under 12 months old and between 2-6 grams of salt for a child up until their 11th birthday.


http://www.eatwell.gov.uk/healthydiet/fss/salt/howmuchsalteat/


In the US, the RDA is 2.3 g of sodium, or 5.75 g of salt, since to calculate the amount of salt from sodium you should multiply by 2.5.

http://www.health.gov/dietaryguidelines/dga2005/recommendations.htm
http://www.salt.gov.uk/cgi-bin/saltcalc.pl

Maggie Brown (Author)

Visit Amazon's Maggie Brown Page

Find all the books, read about the author, and more.

Top Stories