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The hidden danger cocoa protects your heart from
To me, sitting in my chair for hours with a book seems the perfect way to relax. But it’s doing something sinister to my body: reducing the function of my blood vessels.
If you’re spending a lot of time working at a computer, driving for long periods, watching TV or gaming for hours — the same thing is happening to your blood vessels. And all that sitting can dramatically increase the risk of stroke and heart attack.
Depending on the reasons for a sedentary lifestyle, it’s not always easy to add more movement to reduce those risks.
But what else can you do? Reach for foods that help reduce that risk for you…
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The real dangers of too much sitting
Low-energy activities, like the ones I mentioned above, including my favorite pastime, sitting and reading, align with what’s known as a sedentary lifestyle.
And for decades, researchers have been warning us about the health dangers of living that way…
Known dangers of all that sitting include a greater risk of diabetes, dementia, and deep vein thrombosis, or DVT.
Previous research has also confirmed for us that a sedentary lifestyle is a sure-fire road to heart disease.
That’s daunting enough, but so is this: if you’re less active and suffer a heart attack, the odds are likely that you’ll die immediately. That means no opportunity for life-saving surgery and a second chance.
Now, a British research team has set out to determine whether eating foods high in flavanols could help offset the decline in vascular health associated with prolonged sitting.
The results were as good as the tasty foods that lowered these scary risks…
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Heart protection from the effects of sitting
The subjects chosen for the study were forty healthy young men. Women were excluded from the study because fluctuations in estrogen during the menstrual cycle could influence how flavonols affect vascular function.
Twenty of the men had higher fitness levels, and twenty had lower fitness levels. All of them drank either a high-flavonol or low-flavonol cocoa drink before sitting for two hours.
Measures showed that all who drank the low-flavonol drink — even the men with higher fitness levels — showed declines in arterial function in their arms and legs, as well as increases in diastolic blood pressure and lower leg muscle oxygenation.
This indicates that just being more physically fit doesn’t protect you from the vascular effects of prolonged sitting.
On the other hand, participants on both fitness levels who drank a high-flavonol cocoa drink did not show the same declines in arterial function.
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Say yes to berries, apples, tea and cocoa
So, there are two things you can do to protect your heart, and one is pretty easy…
Add more foods high in flavanols to your diet. Berries, apples, tea and hot cocoa are great choices. But there is a long list of flavanol-rich foods if you need more diversity, including…
- Onions
- Kale
- Broccoli
- Leafy greens
- Tomatoes
- Berries
- Apples
- Grapes
- Pomegranates
- Soybean
- Dark chocolate
- Red wine
- Green and black tea
If you can cut down on the time you spend sitting throughout the day, it can only help. Here are a few ways you can start doing that:
- Walk to work, if possible, or designate time for a walk at home during the day or on break at the office.
- Stand up periodically. Going from a seated to a standing position can have a measurable impact on blood pressure over time.
- Set a timer to get up from your desk every hour and walk around for five minutes. You’ll reduce two factors that harm your blood vessels.
- Watch TV while exercising or walking a treadmill instead of sitting down.
Editor’s note: What do you really know about stroke? The truth is, only 10% of stroke survivors recover almost completely, and all doctors can offer is what to do after a stroke occurs. That’s unacceptable considering 80% of strokes are preventable! Click here to discover how to escape The Stroke Syndrome: 5 Signs it’s Stalking You — Plus the Hidden Causes and Preventive Measures You’ve Never Heard About!
Sources:
Cocoa and tea may protect your heart from the hidden damage of sitting — Science Daily
Dietary flavanols preserve upper- and lower-limb endothelial function during sitting in high- and low-fit young healthy males — The Journal of Physiology
By Joyce Hollman
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