{"id":25020,"date":"2010-07-08T12:12:56","date_gmt":"2010-07-08T17:12:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.dietsinreview.com\/diet_column\/?p=25020"},"modified":"2010-07-08T12:14:09","modified_gmt":"2010-07-08T17:14:09","slug":"dark-chocolate-is-good-for-high-blood-pressure","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dietsinreview.com\/diet_column\/07\/dark-chocolate-is-good-for-high-blood-pressure\/","title":{"rendered":"Dark Chocolate is Good for High Blood Pressure"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"dark<\/a>How good can dark chocolate be for high blood pressure? The flavanols found in dark chocolate<\/a> stimulate the production of endothelial nitric oxide, which causes blood vessels to dilate and potentially lower blood pressure. Past studies have reported conflicting results about the benefits of flavanols, but a new meta-analysis published in BMC Medicine<\/a> examined the findings of 13 studies on the subject. The studies assessed met the criteria of measuring the effects of cocoa as a food or drink on systolic and diastolic blood pressure as compared to a placebo. The new study concluded that dark chocolate, but not milk or white chocolate, did reduce hypertension<\/a> and prehypertension, equivalent to the effects produced by 30 minutes of exercise.<\/p>\n

But that doesn’t mean we can all trade-in a workout for a candy bar. In other words, eating dark, flavanol-rich chocolate only helped to reduce blood pressure in individuals who had high blood pressure.<\/p>\n

However, the results do not include individuals with normal blood pressure. Furthermore, it’s unclear if the results only indicate short-term benefits, or if any type of long-term treatment using chocolate could be successful. The fact that chocolate does contain high concentrations of fat and sugars remains unchanged, so overeating will lead to weight gain.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A new meta-study concludes that dark chocolate can lower blood pressure, but benefits are limited to individuals with hypersension. Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[1769,454,31,1217,383],"class_list":["post-25020","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-blood-pressure","tag-chocolate","tag-health-news","tag-hypertension","tag-research-studies"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dietsinreview.com\/diet_column\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25020","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dietsinreview.com\/diet_column\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dietsinreview.com\/diet_column\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dietsinreview.com\/diet_column\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/23"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dietsinreview.com\/diet_column\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25020"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/dietsinreview.com\/diet_column\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25020\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25068,"href":"https:\/\/dietsinreview.com\/diet_column\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25020\/revisions\/25068"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dietsinreview.com\/diet_column\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25020"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dietsinreview.com\/diet_column\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25020"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dietsinreview.com\/diet_column\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25020"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}