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The Wellness Blueprint: With Dr. Caleb Davis
Welcome to The Wellness Blueprint with Dr. Caleb Davis, where we uncover the secrets to living a long, active, and pain-free life. Hosted by Dr. Caleb Davis, an orthopedic surgeon and fitness enthusiast, this podcast is your ultimate guide to musculoskeletal health, injury prevention, and wellness.
Dr. Davis combines his expertise as a shoulder and elbow specialist with a passion for empowering people to take charge of their health. From deep dives into cutting-edge restorative medicine to practical tips on avoiding surgery and optimizing recovery, The Wellness Blueprint offers valuable insights for anyone seeking to preserve their body and thrive at every stage of life.
Join us each week for professional guidance, fascinating medical discussions, and actionable strategies that help you move better, feel stronger, and stay functional for years to come. Whether you're an athlete, a weekend warrior, or someone looking to age gracefully, The Wellness Blueprint provides the tools to design a healthier you.
The Wellness Blueprint: With Dr. Caleb Davis
Episode 21: Dark Delights: Unwrapping Chocolate's Health Benefits
Ever wondered if chocolate is really a super health food? Join Dr. Caleb Davis and Nicole Davis, as we embark on a tantalizing journey into the world of chocolate. In this episode, you'll gain a fresh perspective on this beloved indulgence.
Curious about chocolate's health benefits? We'll tackle the science behind dark chocolate's potential to improve cardiovascular health, brain function, and even mood.
As we explore the science, you'll learn about the differences between cocoa butter and cocoa powder, and why dark chocolate holds a special place in health circles. Are flavonoids just a buzzword, or do they hold the key to improved heart and gut health? We’ll discuss it all, from the potential for chocolate to enhance athletic performance to its relationship with acne and sleep.
Join us and indulge in a conversation as sweet as the treat itself!
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Hey everybody and welcome back to the Wellness Blueprint. I'm your host, dr Caleb Davis, and as usual, I'm joined by the lovely and talented Nicole Davis.
Speaker 2:Hey everybody.
Speaker 1:Nicole, thanks for being here.
Speaker 2:Yeah, of course.
Speaker 1:I think you're going to be particularly interested in today's subject matter, as I think you are somewhat of an expert, and today we're going to be talking about chocolate and all of its health effects and maybe health side effects and problems.
Speaker 2:Problems? There are no problems with chocolate.
Speaker 1:So you're not unbiased, would you say. Well, we'll get into the problems with chocolate. We'll dive into what might be some of the health benefits of chocolate.
Speaker 2:But can we dive into a giant vat of chocolate?
Speaker 1:What you do in your personal time off the air is none of my business. What sparked this topic for me was a recent trip to Switzerland Nicole and I took a couple weeks ago. We went to Switzerland a couple weeks ago and were interested in trying some chocolate and I told Nicole go buy some chocolate so I can take it back to my staff and some of my surgical partners and just so we can give it as gifts In true Nicole fashion. She bought a lot of chocolate, nicole. Tell us about your chocolate shopping experience in Switzerland.
Speaker 2:Well, well, it was lovely. I took the public transit, which is free, which is fantastic, it's always on time and then I walked a portion of the way past several beautiful stores, got myself a pretzel, and then I said, hmm, I guess I should walk into this chocolate store right over here because it's been recommended to me by some Swiss people.
Speaker 1:The locals said this is the chocolate.
Speaker 2:you have to go get Right which you wouldn't expect that, because it was like the major store off of all the major streets.
Speaker 1:There were three locations. There was multiple ones.
Speaker 2:I don't know how to pronounce it, but it's Laderbach.
Speaker 1:I think it was Laderach.
Speaker 2:Laderach. Yeah, I think you're right. You're more Swiss than I am.
Speaker 1:I have a little Swiss in me, yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I went in there and I was poking around trying to read things and I tried to mime to this woman can I try some chocolate? Because?
Speaker 1:one time I really wish I'd been there for this experience. I was working this was a work trip actually so I was working. When I sent Nicole on this loathsome errand, Very loathsome errand, she had no interest in doing it right, right, right, yeah.
Speaker 2:So I said do you speak English? And she said eh.
Speaker 1:Which is funny because most people we ran into spoke pretty good English in Switzerland.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:For the most part at least.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, maybe I should have broken out my translator app. I certainly can't speak any Swiss, or is it French or German?
Speaker 1:Well, they speak French, german and Italian in Switzerland. They're way more awesome than I am. Oh, I wouldn't say that, but we are in a more German-speaking area, so most of the people spoke German. Yeah, nine.
Speaker 2:We are in a more German speaking area, so most of the people spoke German. Yeah, nein, maybe just cut that part.
Speaker 1:Is that all of the German you know?
Speaker 2:Nein, okay anyway. So I said, can I try some? And so she finally figured out what I was trying to say and I broke off this piece from this giant slab of chocolate. It was like a brick, like a thin, like table of chocolate, sheet, sheet, yes, that's the word. Thank you, dr Big Guy. And she broke it off for me and I tried it and I went yes, this is good. And so then I proceeded to buy a large quantity.
Speaker 1:But I was standing there counting on my fingers and then I, like, went on your work website to count up all the partners that you have, because I wanted to make sure I didn't forget anyone.
Speaker 2:So everyone loved it. By the way, everyone said how great the chocolate was. So well, we've had an incident where we purchased chocolate from a trip abroad and it did not end up being the bee's knees that's true.
Speaker 1:We went to Costa Rica and bought a bunch of chocolate for people and I did not taste, test it and it was not great.
Speaker 2:Well, it's not by American standards.
Speaker 1:Well, it wasn't sweet at all. Yeah, because it was very dark chocolate it was very, very dark, with very low sugar added, which we will talk about in this episode. Some of the benefits of that versus say a more milky chocolate.
Speaker 2:So I'm not knocking on Costa Rica chocolate, Okay so, but Laderach man, that's the best milk chocolate I've ever consumed in my life.
Speaker 1:I'm not a big chocolate guy. I don't go crazy for chocolate. If you just handed me a Hershey chocolate bar or any kind of generic American brand, I'd be like nah, no, thanks, I'm good. But I got to tell you, when Nicole handed me that Laderach when we were on the flight back I was like this is the best chocolate I've ever had. So we were talking to some friends and talking about our chocolate adventures in Switzerland and somebody said well, you should make a podcast episode about chocolate. And I was thinking, well, I'm not sure what I can do for a podcast episode about chocolate. But then it dawned on me. Chocolate's been touted as a superfood, health food for decades and people just take that for granted. And a lot of times chocolate can also be considered almost like a junk food too, because it's sugary and sweet and fatty. So I thought it would be really interesting to do a whole episode dedicated to chocolate.
Speaker 2:Plus, it was just Valentine's Day, so a lot of people probably went out and purchased chocolate for their loved ones Probably ate a lot of chocolate over this month.
Speaker 1:What did you?
Speaker 2:get me for Valentine's Day.
Speaker 1:A trip to Switzerland? Yeah, that's a good answer.
Speaker 2:Filled with chocolate.
Speaker 1:So I actually. I was in the operating room until about 8 o'clock at night on Valentine's Day and I remember texting Nicole in between surgeries Nicole, what would you like to do for Valentine's Day? I'm really sorry I can't take you out to dinner. And she said why don't we just snuggle, eat pizza and ice cream and watch a movie? And I said I love this woman. So it was perfect. After a long day of surgery it was nice to just snuggle and watch TV. So that's my favorite kind of Valentine's Day.
Speaker 1:So we'll go ahead and get right into it. You know me, I like facts, I like history, I like deep dives into things. So we're going to go a little bit into the history of chocolate, but we'll try not to spend too much time on it. The earliest evidence of chocolate actually being cultivated and consumed by humans goes back about 5,500 years. It's first thought to be domesticated in the upper Amazon basin, in what we know as modern-day Ecuador, and there was residue of cacao beans found in pottery in the Mayan Empire, and that's when it's thought to have first been discovered. It's used all over the Central America and Mexico in those cultures from 5,000 years ago up until modern day.
Speaker 2:I have two things to add about cacao.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:The first thing is every time somebody says that word. I just want to say cacao.
Speaker 1:Okay, yeah, why Tell me more? I don't know. It's just a reflex I have. It's just a reflex. Cacao. Okay, all right, and.
Speaker 2:The second thing is that for the longest time, I don't know if it's dyslexia or what, but I always thought people were mispronouncing cocoa.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the bean itself is called cacao, and then cocoa is more of one of the products that's from the bean.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but yeah it's a little confusing. But cacao is C-A-C-A-O right.
Speaker 1:That's correct.
Speaker 2:And cocoa is C-O-C-O-A.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and who knows, we're probably mispronouncing cacao anyway, from how the Aztecs and Mayans would have actually called it back 5,000 years ago too. So who knows? So even back in the Aztec days it was thought that cacao and its byproducts had medicinal effects on the human body. It was used in rituals and medicine and it was thought to give warriors strength and virility. Europeans discovered it mostly when the Spanish came to Central America and South America. It was marketed as a cure-all in Europe in the 1600s, meaning take it for this, take it for this problem and this ailment, and it'll cure you. It was used to treat fatigue, digestive issues and even melancholia, meaning like a depression.
Speaker 1:Some notable industrialization and mass production of chocolate started in the 19th century. In 1828, the cocoa press was invented and it was able to separate cocoa butter from cocoa solids, making chocolate more accessible and mass producible. The first chocolate bar was made in 1847, where it combined cocoa powder, cocoa butter and sugar into a bar Milk. Chocolate was shortly discovered after, in 1875, and I shouldn't say discovered, I should really just say invented when Daniel Peter and Henry Nestle, who you might recognize, added condensed milk for a smoother texture in chocolate. And then, in the early 20th century 1900s, chocolate really entered mass production by and people like Milton Hershey and Forrest Mars made chocolate affordable worldwide. These are brand industry names that we still recognize today, like the Mars Bar and Hershey's obviously For sure.
Speaker 1:Cacao is a very particular plant that can only grow in certain environments, much like coffee, is very limited. The main producer of cacao is the Ivory Coast, and then there's Ghana and Ecuador as well. It really has to be right along the equator.
Speaker 2:It requires warm humid climates that have and has well-drained soils.
Speaker 1:It seems similar to the same areas that can grow coffee beans. So let's talk about some of the modern cultural significance of chocolate. Global chocolate consumption, you may not be surprised to believe, is most popular in Switzerland, germany and the United Kingdom. They're the top consumers per capita. The US chocolate industry is worth $20 billion annually. It's a big business. And then artisanal brands of chocolate are starting to gain a little bit more popularity over mass-produced chocolate. So maybe Laderach might be on the rise over Hershey and Mars Bar. Personally I'm not a big Hershey's guy, like it's just there's it's just different.
Speaker 2:It hits you different. It does hit you different, but I've I always grew up eating Hershey's with uh when I make s'mores, and then I would always get Nestle, especially Nestle cocoa. That was something I would have a lot.
Speaker 1:I've always been a little bit of a food snob, so I guess this is just a continuing part of the trend. So I remember dark chocolate being called a superfood and health food when I was younger. I don't feel like I've heard people talk about it as much. I don't know about you, but it's not been a topic that has been in the general conversation as much lately, which is interesting. But as we develop more and more health food, as the health food industry becomes more of a prevalent sub-market and as people become more health conscious, they're also starting to develop more alternative chocolate type products like sugar-free chocolate and high protein chocolate and plant-based chocolate that has no milk, no cow milk. Obviously, cacao is a plant product, but a lot of chocolate has milk in it, so they're trying to find more vegan-friendly options. So that's something that's a growing trend in chocolate as well.
Speaker 1:But I think we've talked about the origins of chocolate enough. We've rambled a little bit, as we are want to do. Let's talk about some of the health benefits that may arise from consuming chocolate. So we'll dive into each one of these topics separately. But there have been claims that chocolate can aid in cardiovascular health, improving blood vessel function and decreasing cholesterol. There's talk of brain function, like mood, memory, neuroprotection meaning you're not having as much cognitive decline with age. As we mentioned, mood and mental health. Chocolate's been said to contain serotonin precursors that may help with mood. It's even been suggested that dark chocolate and other chocolate-type products can help with the blood sugar stabilization and help prevent diabetes. There's also a lot of talk about cocoa butter being good for your skin and possibly having UV protection effects as well, and if not UV protection, then maybe moisturization or collagen production, giving you a thicker, more supple skin.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I do see a lot of products for body washes and such that have cocoa butter in it.
Speaker 1:Yes, and so there's a lot of those claims as well. We're talking about cocoa butter, we're talking about cocoa powder. Do you know the difference? Because I had to look all this up for this episode.
Speaker 2:I just assumed that one was liquefied and the other was in a powdery form. But no, I couldn't tell you.
Speaker 1:Okay, well, I'm glad that I'm not the only one, because my resident chocolate lover here doesn't know either. So I feel a little bit better, but I did have to look this up. Cocoa butter is the fat that gets extracted from cocoa beans, so it's just a part of the bean. It's not liquid form and powder form, okay. So it's obtained by pressing roasted cocoa beans and separating the fat out from the solids. So it's a yellow, pale yellow in color. It's smooth and creamy. It melts at body temperature, much like saturated fat and other types of fats.
Speaker 1:It's considered high in quote unquote healthy fats like stearic acid and oleic acid, and it's used in cosmetics, chocolate making and a lot of skincare products. It provides that smoothness and rich, glossy texture you think of in chocolate bars. Cocoa solids are the non-fat components that are separated out from the cocoa bean, including the cocoa powder and all of the compounds that are responsible for its flavor and its bitterness. And this is more where you think of all the healthy, different chemical compounds in chocolate are really found in the solid part of the product and not so much the cocoa butter part of the product. It's dark brown, it's bitter. It has a very strong cocoa flavor. It's rich in the antioxidants, the flavonoids and the caffeine, and it's used in baking dark chocolate, making of hot chocolate, things like that. So let's talk a little bit about types of chocolate. When we talk about chocolate, we think about three major types, right?
Speaker 1:Milk dark and white.
Speaker 2:Really.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so milk chocolate, dark chocolate and white chocolate. The interesting thing about white chocolate is it contains cocoa butter but no cocoa solids at all, so it's really not even chocolate per se. It does have the cocoa butter, but that's why it's so creamy and doesn't have that bitterness at all. Milk chocolate contains both butter and cocoa solids, but you add, as you might expect, milk. Dark chocolate can come in multiple, various forms, but it has a higher percentage of cocoa solids and less of the cocoa butter, making it more intense and bitter. And, as anyone who's ever consumed dark chocolate can tell you, a lot of times on the label it will say this much percentage cocoa, and you can get up to as high as 95%. That tends to be a pretty bitter, strong flavor.
Speaker 2:You know who still eats that? Who Me? You like 95%. I mean, I don't know that I like it, but I eat it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think you're on to something because, as we'll get into this episode, I think that's where most of the health benefits come from. Is those cocoa solids? Yes, yeah, so you're in luck. Excellent. So dark chocolate, typically between 50% and 90% cocoa content, high in flavonoids in particular. It does have some sugar and carbohydrate content and fat content, but it's much lower than its counterparts. It's got a lot of minerals like manganese and phosphorus and zinc and calcium and magnesium and iron when you say sugar, I'm assuming you mean added sugar it that that depends.
Speaker 1:I believe there's some carbohydrate content in the bean itself, but not much. But yes, dark chocolate sold on the market it doesn't. It has added sugar. There's not probably much of an actual sugar content in the pure beet product. Milk chocolate is anywhere between 10% and 50% cocoa solids, so it's a much lower level, and they usually add milk and sugar in a higher degree, which makes it higher in calories and higher in sugar, although adding the milk does increase some protein and vitamin D content, although it's pretty negligible. Then, when you're talking about white chocolate, most people aren't claiming that it has any health benefits whatsoever, so you can gloss over that.
Speaker 2:I always thought white chocolate was just chocolate with extra flavor to make it look white, like flavor and additives.
Speaker 1:I didn't realize Like just lots and lots of milk.
Speaker 2:Yeah, something.
Speaker 1:I didn't realize. Lots and lots of milk, yeah something like I.
Speaker 2:No, I didn't realize there were three categories of chocolate.
Speaker 1:I thought it was just milk and dark well, I'll be honest, I I didn't really know all that much either, and I don't really like white chocolate very much, and maybe that's just my intuitive brain saying this isn't healthy no, I'm just kidding, that's not I I don't know, I just never liked white chocolate very much.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I've had it. I guess I've had it like dipped over pretzels and stuff.
Speaker 1:I don't know, like a white chocolate macadamia nut cookie is pretty good.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:You ever heard people talk about how chocolate really affects their mood? You ever had people talk about euphoria or feeling so good after chocolate or anything like that. Yep, that talk about euphoria or feeling so good after chocolate or anything like that. So I wanted to see why do people feel good when they eat chocolate, aside just from sugar? Right, Sugar, I think we all know, gives everyone a little bit of a mild happy feeling and can make you feel happy.
Speaker 1:But there are actually some psychoactive compounds found in chocolate that can directly affect your mood. It's not just sugar. There's theobromine, which is a stimulant similar to caffeine, but much more mild. It increases heart rate and has a very mild mood enhancing effect. It can cause some slight euphoria and alertness. Then there is just straight up caffeine that we're all used to. It's in small amounts, especially in dark chocolate and higher concentrations, and it's a central nervous system stimulant. We did a whole episode on caffeine that you can go back and listen to. We can go a little bit more in detail on that. Then there's a compound called anandamide. It's also called the bliss molecule. It's a fatty acid neurotransmitter that interacts with the cannabinoid receptor CB1.
Speaker 2:That's a lot.
Speaker 1:Well, cannabinoid, I think it's related to what marijuana and THC might interact with. Oh, so cannabis, it's cannabinoid. I think it's related to what marijuana and THC might interact with, and it has a oh, so cannabis. Yeah, that's what cannabinoid refers to.
Speaker 2:Well, I'm a normal person and I did not catch that.
Speaker 1:You're a normal person.
Speaker 2:Okay, no, I am a non-medically educated person.
Speaker 1:Okay, okay, sorry. Cannabinoid is referring to things like compounds found in cannabis.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:Yeah, found in cannabis. Okay, yeah, great. This also has a mild euphoric and mood enhancing effect similar to cannabinoids produced naturally in the brain, because that is a compound that's also found in the brain naturally. There's also a compound called phenylethalamine We'll say PEA for short, because phenylethalamine is a little bit harder to say. This promotes that release of dopamine and serotonin in the brain. This is sometimes called the love drug, and it's associated with feelings of pleasure and attraction. It's quickly metabolized and so its side effects are short-lived. There's also the chemical tryptophan, which we're all familiar with because people talk about it in turkey and it making you sleepy. This is an amino acid and it's a precursor to serotonin, and some people have contributed this to chocolate's comforting and mood boosting properties.
Speaker 2:I forget the word where you can have certain scents or flavors and they're supposed to stimulate eroticism. Do you remember the word?
Speaker 1:An aphrodisiac.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so is chocolate supposed to be an aphrodisiac.
Speaker 1:Leave it to Nicole to bring up an aphrodisiac. Yeah, so is chocolate supposed to be an aphrodisiac? Leave it to Nicole to bring up an aphrodisiac, because it's Valentine's Day and chocolate's given to people. I mean, it does have the love, that love drug.
Speaker 2:I know.
Speaker 1:The feelings of euphoria, serotonin dopamine and also the fact that it can be a mild vasodilator All of these things could be combined.
Speaker 2:Remind us non-medical people what a vasodilator is.
Speaker 1:Vasodilator means your blood vessels become opened and allowing more blood flow to places, so that could potentially be something that might aid in, shall we say romantic matters of matters of the heart, amorous activities, but as far as I can tell, there's not a whole lot of evidence to suggest that there is an actual sexual stimulant, uh, involved directly from chocolate all right, I'm just surprised because it's always associated with valentine's day yeah, well, so are diamonds, you know diamonds on valentine's well, diamonds you give diamonds to people you love is what I mean, like jewels.
Speaker 2:Well, that's just really good marketing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, I think that's the same for chocolate.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:The other thing I looked into is why is that Swiss chocolate so much better than chocolate in the United States? And I had to figure it out. So I'm going to give very, very top notch. You know the Swiss. They're very efficient, very so-so, very particular At least that's been my experience. So they have very high quality cocoa beans, they use fresh alpine milk and pure cocoa butter and they avoid any sort of cheap additives and substitutes.
Speaker 2:Sounds delicious.
Speaker 1:Apparently, this has been a huge part of Swiss culture for the last 200 years, so there's been some key innovations that were developed in Switzerland. Regarding chocolate, there's a process called conching, which was invented by Rodolphe Lint.
Speaker 2:another name you may recognize in 1879.
Speaker 1:This process involves continuous churning and aerating of chocolate to create a very smooth, creamy texture. And then another Swiss gentleman by the name of Daniel Peter developed milk chocolate in the 19th century using condensed milk from the Swiss Alps, which gave it a richer, creamier taste compared to other versions. Apparently, the milk up in the Alps is just top-notch. I don't know if it has something to do with the cows up in the high altitude or the….
Speaker 2:We should have found a cow while we were out there and just gave it a taste.
Speaker 1:Some raw milk.
Speaker 2:Yeah, people are into that. We should do an episode on that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, rfk Junior's in control now, right, so raw milk's going to be everywhere. Apparently, swiss chocolate also tends to have a higher percentage of cocoa butter, which enhances its smoothness and melt-in-your-mouth texture. And then, also with Switzerland, the per capita consumption of chocolate is incredibly high, so it leads to a high demand for perfection as well, which I expect nothing less from the Swiss that's right, we have a my people.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we have a lot of respect for the Swiss.
Speaker 1:And a lot of the famous brands come from Switzerland, like Lindt and Toblerone, and now, apparently, laderach is a big brand over there too, which I will be seeking out whenever I see it. Okay, we've talked a lot about some of the potential health benefits, so let's dive into it all. Right, nicole, feel free to stop me whenever I say something that doesn't make any sense. So let's start with cardiovascular health. Heart health is always such an interesting topic because it is the number one killer of United States adults, so it's always something that's top of the list for things that we might be able to improve. So dark chocolate's been reported to supposedly help cardiovascular health. Some of those flavonoids we had talked about, some of the compounds found in dark chocolate and cocoa powder, are supposed to increase nitric oxide, which is a naturally occurring compound in your body that helps improve blood flow.
Speaker 2:Most heart disease Is that the vasodilator?
Speaker 1:Yes, Nitric oxide is a vasodilator. Most heart disease, when you think of a heart attack, is lack of blood flow to heart tissue. So increased blood flow to the heart may help reduce blood pressure problems, chances of heart attacks and maybe even what we call peripheral blood flow, meaning blood flow to your hands and your feet and your extremities.
Speaker 2:Quick question. This is a nerd question. In Harry Potter, when the Dementors came out and they started to affect Harry, professor Lupin would always give him some chocolate and that would make him feel better. Is that because when you're feeling faint, your veins are like constricting and then with the chocolate it's like a vasodilation?
Speaker 1:thing. I'm sure when Miss Rowling was writing the book she had very scientific basis for that. I'm absolutely positive. Yeah, you know, when the werewolf man gave the magic boy chocolate because that weird demon thing was trying to suck his soul out, I'm sure it was all. It's all very scientific.
Speaker 2:You know what? I'm going to always bring up my nerd references. Okay, Just accept me for who I am.
Speaker 1:I'm okay with it. I'm okay with it. I'm just saying, just like when you asked how Wolverine's bones work. I don't know how to answer that question.
Speaker 2:You had a great answer last time, so I figured so if you are feeling faint, does that mean that your veins are constricted?
Speaker 1:There's so many ways to answer that question. What I'm going to say if you're having a heart attack, you should have a bar of chocolate and you'll be safe.
Speaker 1:That's what I'm going to say this is not my official stance. Please note that for the record. There's also been some studies that have shown that there may be a mild decrease in LDL cholesterol, which is quote-unquote considered bad cholesterol, and a mild increase in HDL cholesterol quote-unquote good cholesterol. This is noted because they believe some of the compounds in chocolate may help your body process cholesterol more efficiently. In the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition in 2012, there was a large 42 randomized controlled trial meta-analysis looking at a large group of people that did show that regular dark chocolate consumption did decrease blood pressure. And there's also another study in the Natural Scientific Reports Journal in 2023, which was a long-term cohort study showing lower incidence of general heart disease in regular consumers of dark chocolate. There is some data that would suggest that there is some cardioprotective effects of dark chocolate. Now it has to be noted, unfortunately, since milk chocolate's the most popular, a lot of those health benefits significantly decrease as you drop the cocoa content and raise the sugar content. Sure, as you might imagine, most of these studies look at a higher percentage of cocoa dark chocolate, unfortunately because milk chocolate is delicious.
Speaker 1:So can chocolate boost cognitive function? Is it good for your brain? Just like we talked about nitric oxide, increasing blood flow to your heart. It also enhances cerebral blood flow, so blood flow to your brain. It also may reduce neuroinflammation generalized inflammatory markers in your brain which could be protective against things like Parkinson's disease and Alzheimer's disease A lot of these things. When we study, we show that it increases blood flow to the brain. That's all well and good. We can see that and actually observe that.
Speaker 1:The question is does it long-term protect people? Because just because we see one principle doesn't mean it carries over to long-term benefits. So that's not quite fully been parsed out yet. What I'm saying is we can observe that dark chocolate can increase blood flow to the brain. The question then begs does that increased blood flow actually protect you from Alzheimer's disease long-term if you regularly consume dark chocolate? I don't think we have a definitive answer to that yet.
Speaker 1:There was a study in the Journal of Neurology published in 2013, which was a randomized controlled trial using elderly adults, and it didn't show increased cerebral blood flow and improved memory function compared to those who were not regularly consuming dark chocolate. There was also a study done in Harvard in 2020 that looked at flavonoids and dementia risk, and high flavonoid intake, mainly from dark chocolate and berries was linked to lower risks of dementia as well. So here's another really big hot topic that's becoming much more popular in the last decade, and that's gut health. Are you familiar with the concept of gut health? Yeah, for sure. Gut health is a very broad term, and that's gut health.
Speaker 2:Are you familiar with the concept of gut health.
Speaker 1:Yeah for sure. Gut health is a very broad term. And then people talk about gut microbiome, which is even more specific to talking about the types of bacteria that are living in your gut, how you can have quote unquote good bacteria and bad bacteria, and what you eat and your environment might affect it and how it might affect your mood. People talk about the gut brain connection because there's so many neurons in your gut that might actually affect your mood. People talk about the gut-brain connection because there's so many neurons in your gut that might actually affect your mood. So bacteria and the types of bacteria might actually affect your personality and mood, which is really a pretty wild thing to think about. It's more of a developing science, but I'll be really curious to see some of the conclusions we come up with in the next couple decades. A lot of times interventions for these scientific studies look at how can we increase good gut bacteria. I'm sure you've heard this concept because people talk about probiotics.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And they're trying to encourage an environment where your gut can grow the good bacteria and kill the bad bacteria. So people have proposed that dark chocolate might help good gut bacteria grow.
Speaker 2:Okay, sounds like we need to buy some more dark chocolate might help good gut bacteria grow. Okay, sounds like we need to buy some more dark chocolate.
Speaker 1:I think so. So far, all these studies have shown me if I don't want to have a heart attack or have my soul sucked out by a dementor, then I need to eat more chocolate.
Speaker 2:Yeah, pretty much, you're welcome.
Speaker 1:Thanks, jk. There was a study in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition in 2011 found that high flavonoid content from cocoa selectively increased good gut bacteria. Now, this was mostly done in animal studies and also in vitro, meaning they took the bad and good bacteria to Petri dish and applied some of these compounds and it would let the good bacteria grow and the bad bacteria not grow, and so it's not directly applied in human studies yet. So much in that particular study. Then we come to mental health and mood. We talked a little bit about the psychoactive compounds of chocolate. Already, people talk so much about being in a better mood after they eat chocolate, so this was a particularly interesting topic to me. Do you feel like when you eat chocolate, you're in a better mood?
Speaker 2:better mood? Yeah, and I never really thought about it in terms of is it just the fact that I'm eating chocolate and it feels like a treat and therefore that makes me feel better?
Speaker 1:or the actual chocolate itself. You're saying that any kind of sugary, sweet nice treat could have the same effect.
Speaker 2:Potentially it doesn't have to be chocolate anything that I associate with happiness, yeah, like bread or ice cream yeah something like that. Yeah, yeah, like good home baked bread I'm not gonna rehash actually in the process of baking. It's gonna be delicious is it baking now or rising it's rising.
Speaker 1:The bread is rising. I think we could write a book called hot bread rising or something. It sounds like a, sounds like an epic novel. Hot bread, chocolate bread. You ever had a chocolate babka? Maybe, that's one of my favorites.
Speaker 2:Would you get that?
Speaker 1:from Trader Joe's.
Speaker 2:Trader Joe's had a really good chocolate babka, I probably have had it, then, if you've had it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's probably healthy. It's probably good for you, yeah. So I'm not going to rehash too much on some of these psychoactive chemicals found in chocolate, but I will talk about some of the studies. So chocolate's reported to be able to reduce stress and improve your mood, and there was a study in the Journal of Affective Disorder in 2006. It was an observational study on chocolate consumption and mood. It showed that frequent chocolate consumers reported lower stress levels. There's a large sample size. There's over 1,000 people who answered this questionnaire. However, just like most observational studies, it's incredibly open to interpretation and subjective bias because it's just self-reported measurements. But it is self-reported that regular consumers of chocolate have better moods and lower stress levels. On the slightly more scientific study, there was another study that I read about during research for this episode that talked about decreased urinary cortisol levels. As we know, cortisol is associated with high stress and regular chocolate consumers showed decreased urine cortisol levels over time when they were started consuming chocolate.
Speaker 2:So is this cortisol that can be found in your urine, or is this like a really stressed out person urinating?
Speaker 1:There's always going to be trace levels of cortisol in your urine. There's different ways of testing cortisol. You can do it in your saliva, your urine, directly from your blood. So urine is just a much less invasive way of measuring your cortisol. So that's just the way that the people who designed this study measured it. Gotcha Good question. That'd be funny, if wouldn't it be funny if the only super stressed out people peed cortisol and it was like wow, you're really stressed out, You're peeing cortisol like crazy.
Speaker 2:What color would it be?
Speaker 1:I don't know.
Speaker 2:Not chocolate.
Speaker 1:If your urine is chocolate colored, you are in trouble.
Speaker 2:You're in deep chocolate.
Speaker 1:You're in deep chocolate. Nice one, thank you. Diabetes Now, this is a counterintuitive one, right? Because you think chocolate, sugar, diabetes, bad. However, we're talking mostly about dark chocolate with less sugar. There were some studies that dark chocolate can help increase glucose uptake into muscle cells, which would increase your insulin sensitivity, which, as we know, is a good thing. It also is linked to reduced inflammation. In 2005, in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, a randomized controlled trial on people with pre-diabetes.
Speaker 1:So not full-blown diabetes showed that dark chocolate consumption improved insulin sensitivity by 11%, which is a fairly yeah, that's pretty significant, pretty significant result. So this is a well-controlled study. It is a randomized controlled trial, and so this is a pretty well-designed study that has pretty promising outcomes. Now I will give the caveat that if you're regularly consuming milk chocolate, you're probably going to have the opposite effect of what you want.
Speaker 2:So we shouldn't stock up on Lauderock, the next opportunity we get.
Speaker 1:Well, let's just go switch to the new Eric once a year and just have our chocolate then.
Speaker 2:Excellent. I love this plan.
Speaker 1:go to Switzerland once a year and just have our chocolate then Excellent. I love this plan. Now, a lot of the studies on chocolate and skin health that I looked up were just not very conclusive, so I'm not going to spend too much time on this. I think in general, I would not rely on cocoa butter products to keep me safe from the sun. Based on what I've read, I will say that, just like any other kind of lotion or oil fat product, it does seem to hydrate your skin fairly well. I don't think that we're going to be discovering any miracle anti-aging serums from cocoa butter anytime soon, at least not from the data that I showed. But I could not find any conclusive evidence that cocoa butter is going to make you youthful and take care of all of your skin cancer concerns.
Speaker 2:I think our generation's version of the fountain of youth is actually Botox injections.
Speaker 1:Tell me more.
Speaker 2:Well, most women that I have interacted with are familiar with Botox injections, and women as young as in their 20s, from what I can tell, have started doing regular Botox injections to help prevent, I guess lines.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's supposed to prevent wrinkles because you're paralyzing the small muscles in your face from wrinkling. I don't want to get into a whole tangent here, but I think that we're going to regret those decisions later on in life. People starting them so young. That's a relatively safe process, but I'm a little hesitant to see so many people using it so quickly and so young and for so long term. That's a topic for another podcast.
Speaker 2:That'd be an interesting one.
Speaker 1:Just briefly, let's talk about chocolate and sleep. There are some stimulants in chocolate, both caffeine and theobromine. This is an alkaloid in cocoa that has a mild stimulant effect and increases your heart rate. Theobromine, taken alone can mildly cause sleep disruption, maybe make it a little bit harder to sleep and have a little bit more restless sleep, and, as we know, caffeine can certainly do that if consumed in any period close to bedtime. So a lot of the studies that I looked on with chocolate and sleep did show that there can be mild impacts on sleep and difficulty sleeping if consumed close to bedtime. Have you ever taken chocolate at night and felt like it's prevented you from sleeping?
Speaker 2:No, but I also haven't tried to make a correlation between it.
Speaker 1:I can't. I wonder how much chocolate you really have to eat, and I wonder if I've been eating enough dark chocolate to ever feel that effect.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:I can't say that I eat much chocolate at all in general, although I'm considering eating more than that bitter, pure dark chocolate after having done this episode.
Speaker 2:Let's do it you want to, yeah.
Speaker 1:Do you like dark chocolate?
Speaker 2:No, I prefer. If you had to ask me my favorite kind of chocolate, it'd be milk chocolate, hands down, but I don't dislike dark chocolate.
Speaker 1:If you knew it was healthy, would you eat 95% dark chocolate.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, was healthy. Would you eat 95 dark chocolate? Yeah, yeah, yeah, but it'd be challenging. But I kind of wonder if any of those health benefits go away if you melt the chocolate or if you heat it up in some ways good question that's one way.
Speaker 2:If I were, I think I have a brick of dark chocolate from mexico that I picked up I don't know last year, and it's so dark and so bitter that I think you're actually supposed to mix it in with milk in a pot and make hot chocolate out of it.
Speaker 1:Oh, I see. Do you know what I'm talking about? Yeah, yeah, yeah, I don't think all of the health effects would go away. I don't think they would Hard to say, though we were talking about skin care and chocolate. Do you know one of the side effects of eating chocolate, what a lot of people complain about with their skin?
Speaker 2:Acne.
Speaker 1:That's right, yeah, yeah. So I looked into this too, and there are some studies that have shown that regular consumption of chocolate does increase skin acne in certain people. Most of the studies that I read were of young men, interestingly enough, because I think you think more of women eating chocolate for whatever reason would you say yeah, especially around the menstrual cycles? Is that right? Is that it's for comfort food?
Speaker 2:Yeah, comfort food, or maybe just biologically. We know at some level that it's going to help us feel better.
Speaker 1:Maybe that nitric oxide and the serotonin boosts just actually make you feel better.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:So menstruation and Valentine's Day, those are when you eat chocolate, right?
Speaker 2:What about after post-emerge activities?
Speaker 1:I don't know if everyone has that ritual or not. It's a great one, though, as if chocolate wasn't a miraculous compound enough, there are even people who report that it might help reduce cancer risks as well.
Speaker 2:Oh.
Speaker 1:You're familiar with the concept of antioxidants. Yeah, I know we've talked about this before. I think people know the word antioxidant, but they're not exactly sure what it means. During energy metabolism, free radicals are released into the blood. These free radicals can damage cells and DNA, and antioxidants help basically scrub the body of free radicals.
Speaker 2:Aren't blueberries also a really good antioxidant?
Speaker 1:A lot of berries in general have a lot of antioxidants, so dark chocolate cocoa also has strong antioxidant properties as well.
Speaker 2:Nice.
Speaker 1:There was a study in 2019 from the Molecular Nutrition and Food Research Journal that looked at cocoa flavonoids and having protective effects against colon cancer by reducing inflammation and DNA damage. But this was also done in animal studies and was not reproduced in human studies yet. But it is an interesting route of research. And then in some of the more large population studies, there are various different studies that look at people who consume dark chocolate regularly may have lower risks of cancer. But, as we've discussed on this podcast many times, when you look at a group of people and you look at one intervention, it may not correlate with the outcome that you're looking at. You know, just because somebody does one thing doesn't mean that there's some other factor causing the outcome. In this case, just because someone's eating lots of chocolate and they have less cancer in a certain population, you can't really make that conclusion.
Speaker 2:So these are always what I would consider a weaker study. But then what?
Speaker 1:makes any of those other studies that you've mentioned more relevant. Well, in medical science, we consider a randomized controlled trial to be the strongest level of evidence. What a randomized controlled trial is? You take two groups of people, you put them in a room, you give one group a thing and you give another group the other thing, or nothing. That's what would be the control. And then you measure what happens to them every day or every month or every year, and so we're actually isolating people and giving them an intervention. In an ideal world, those two groups of people are exactly equal in every single way, except for the intervention that we're looking at. Where? When you're just looking at hundreds of thousands of people in a continent, for example, there are so many different factors that you cannot control for. So that's when I talk about weakness of a study or confounding factors. That's what I'm talking about. You start getting into all this jargon. I'm sure everyone's eyes just glaze over, but these are the things that I think about whenever I read a scientific paper.
Speaker 2:I'm glad you do baby, so I don't have to.
Speaker 1:I'm glad you do baby, so I don't have to, I'm happy to do it for you, baby. So these same effects in chocolate that we talk about we talk about nitric oxide and vasodilation. They've been shown to potentially improve athletic performance as well by increasing oxygen delivery to muscle tissues in your body, so that you can have more endurance and explosive energy.
Speaker 2:Oh, so you need to have some dark chocolate right before a jujitsu.
Speaker 1:Yeah, not too much though, because I don't want to throw up while I'm being choked. In a study in 2015 in the Journal of International Society of Sports Nutrition these journals have such long names the study demonstrated that consuming dark chocolate improved VO2 max and increased nitric oxide availability, which enhanced endurance performance, and this showed a measurable impact on sports performance. This is not just a tiny little effect, although these studies are pretty small sample sizes, so you often wonder can this be reproduced in a normal population, and not just with athletes?
Speaker 2:or with harry potter did.
Speaker 1:Do you think harry potter ate chocolate before he would go catch the snitch?
Speaker 2:Probably. Yeah, I mean it works so well for him with the Dementors.
Speaker 1:Yeah, he probably did, didn't they eat chocolate frogs a lot in Harry?
Speaker 2:Potter yeah, they did.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that was a. Thing.
Speaker 2:I think JK Rowling was onto something.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I think she knew Way ahead of her time for sure. Well, I got to admit, when someone first suggested that I do an episode on chocolate, I didn't think that would really be all that interesting. But after I researched it and did the show notes, I thought this was really cool. This had some really interesting research on it, Some pretty high quality research that actually had some pretty promising data too. So I got to tell you I'm considering eating some of that really bitter unsweetened dark chocolate. What do you think? Are you on board?
Speaker 2:Oh, I'm totally on board.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:I just think chocolate's a beloved staple of society for thousands of years, so anything like that, I feel like, is a fun topic to explore.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's always interesting when you look at something like coffee or chocolate or I don't know. I'm sure there's a hundred other examples of something that people have been doing for millennia, but they don't necessarily have data to back them up on why they're good. There's usually something interesting behind it and maybe some truth behind it too. Maybe not cannibalism or human sacrifice, maybe not that stuff. I'll probably let that one go. I won't do an episode on that, but there's some other ancient practices, Actually cannibalism would be interesting, because then we could talk about why it's not ideal for nutrition.
Speaker 1:I'll put that one on the list, I guess, but it's not what I really want to do. I guess it's a high-protein diet, though.
Speaker 2:Yeah, oh boy.
Speaker 1:Well, I hope you all enjoyed listening to this episode as much as I enjoyed researching it and recording it with Nicole. Nicole and I are going to go ahead and wrap up and go have some dark chocolate right now.
Speaker 2:Yeah, let's do it.
Speaker 1:And until then, why don't you go get some dark chocolate of your own and be humble, be happy, be healthy. We'll see you next week.
