Water With Chocolate

For Wendy! -- We need a study to determine how healthy it would be to eat chocolate covered blueberries, dark colored vegetables with water. The studies are already there someone just needs to put it all together. We know that it's probably more a concept than a possibility but it intrigues us. If not water if you don't like the taste then maybe chocolate soy milk. We know that its not all chocolate nor all dark colored vegetables but a multi-hue of deep rich colors has proven itself most to beneficial to robust health.

"Food stores sell mainly milk chocolate, with sugar, milk, and extra cocoa butter added because they taste good, but the more non cocoa items are added to cocoa, the more dilute the healthy chemicals become." (American Chemical Society)

Research that includes less a population that's smaller than your graduating elementary school class doesn't seem all that conclusive. However when it reaffirms previous research of larger groups it can help to direct behavior that could result in your being able to use the information to easily improve your health with a minimal amount of effort. While the numbers may not be impressive the information confirms what your parents told you and every old wives tale says. Common wisdom isn't always wrong. Research seems to also confirm what is often passed from generation to generation.

"The study included 48 adults aged 55-75 years, divided into two groups. One group drank 2 cups of water prior to their meals and the other did not. All of the subjects ate a low-calorie diet during the study. Over the course of 12 weeks, water drinkers lost about 15.5 pounds, while the non-water drinkers lost about 11 pounds." (American Chemical Society)

The study also warns what should be obvious and what wives have told from every generation to every generation - everything in moderation. Chocolate maybe healthy for you, in moderation. Deep colored fruits and vegetables maybe be beneficial for you health, in moderation. Water can aid in losing weight, what every find restaurant and waiter knows, in moderation. Too much of anything from air, to soap, to water, in moderation.

Brenda Davy, Ph.D., senior author on the study:

"...said water may be so effective simply because it fills up the stomach with a substance that has zero calories. People feel fuller as a result, and eat less calorie-containing food during the meal. Increased water consumption may also help people lose weight if they drink it in place of sweetened calorie-containing beverages, said Davy, who is with Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Va. " (American Chemical Society)

How do we know its true? Because science tells us so. Its' good to know that PearlieMae and your dear old momma were right about some things. They might not have liked technology but when the scence says they're right. They've got to love that! PearlieMae did love technology just not for what it could do but for how easy it was to do what see already enjoyed doing. She could play SCRABBLE on the PC bought for her and listen to her gospel favorites. But No email, no web browsing. It was something at least.

Life By Chocolate

For valentine's day when you give your valentine life affirming chocolates and they wonder why you're eating them all, you can always say that you're feeling a little stroke-ish and you want to do more research on how much it takes to starve it off. Or you could admit you're busted and pull out that second box you got, just in case you got busted. The big news, just in time for the "candy and card created celebration" is chocolate "lowers stroke risk." However the researchers from north of the border said:

“More research is needed to determine whether chocolate truly lowers stroke risk, or whether healthier people are simply more likely to eat chocolate than others,” said study author Sarah Sahib, BScCA, with McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. Sahib worked alongside Gustavo Saposnik, MD, MSc, where the study was completed at St. Michael’s Hospital and the University of Toronto. - American Academy of Neurology (AAN)

It's the sugar in candy that isn't healthy for us right? Chocolate is good. Chocolate is very very good. Now all we need is the chocolate with the most antioxidants but with our luck it'll probably be like Indian Pale Ale or wild blueberries. All the really good stuff is never local and generally unavailable locally.

"To maximize the protective effect chocolate has to offer, your best bet is to reach for dark chocolate when the craving hits. To make sure you are getting the highest concentration of flavonoids, read the list of ingredients and choose bars that list cocoa solids or cocoa mass first, not sugar. Alternatively, choose a bar with a high percentage of cocoa – 70 per cent or more. Beware of highly processed, sugar-coated chocolate bars - these are nothing more than empty calories and contain little in the way of cocoa or flavonoids." Canadian Broadcasting Centre (CBC)

The science is well established for the benefits of chocolate beating wine and tea as a historic health elixir. This is our kind of natural health treatment. A chocolate life seems like the best kind of life of all. However moderation in all things. The most recent research puts it in this technical fashion:

"Flavonoid-rich dark chocolate improves endothelial function and is associated with an increase in plasma epicatechin concentrations in healthy adults. No changes in oxidative stress measures, lipid profiles, blood pressure, body weight or BMI were seen." The Journal of the American College of Nutrition (JACN)

The specifics of the research continued to say:

"Chocolate is rich in antioxidants called flavonoids, which may have a protective effect against stroke, but more research is needed. The first study found that 44,489 people who ate one serving of chocolate per week were 22 percent less likely to have a stroke than people who ate no chocolate. The second study found that 1,169 people who ate 50 grams of chocolate once a week were 46 percent less likely to die following a stroke than people who did not eat chocolate." American Academy of Neurology (AAN)

While the Mayo Clinic can continue to find studies they can review to disprove alternative and naturopathic remedies all they want. History and canadian researchers will continue to prove their effectiveness. From the same sources that brought us the chocolate news comes:

The yogurt, containing live bacteria or yeasts, appears to prevent stress-induced skin inflammation and hair loss. It works in mice, and researchers at the Brain-Body Institute at St. Joseph's Healthcare want to test whether it helps humans. "That is the hope," said lead researcher Dr. Petra Arck, Canada Research Chair in Neuroimmunology. "When they are experiencing stressful periods in their life ... (eating probiotic yogurt) could be a way of dealing with this." (The Spec)

The canadian researchers don't just tell us how to survive our heart attacks they've also go the cocktail for staying young. Their suggestions won't reverse the ravages of time but they can "forestalls aging."

The study found that a complex dietary supplement powerfully offsets this key symptom of ageing in old mice by increasing the activity of the cellular furnaces that supply energy - or mitochondria - and by reducing emissions from these furnaces - or free radicals - that are thought to be the basic cause of aging itself.- McMaster (Daily News)

Did you think we wouldn't tell you the secret formula? Who do you think we are the nightly news. If we know you know. Forget the Mayo Clinic when they're only reviewing research. This is the real scientific and tested deal.

Ingredients consists of items that were purchased in local stores selling vitamin and health supplements for people, including vitamins B1, C, D, E, acetylsalicylic acid, beta carotene, folic acid, garlic, ginger root, ginkgo biloba, ginseng, green tea extract, magnesium, melatonin, potassium, cod liver oil, and flax seed oil. Multiple ingredients were combined based on their ability to offset five mechanisms involved in aging. Daily News

We say take your anti-aging cocktail with some hot black tea with a single serving of chocolate or an unsweeten biscuit with bits of chocolate to start a day that could last for the rest of your healthy life.

The antioxidant catechin content of chocolate is four times that of tea. Chocolate contributed 20% of the catechin intake in a representative sample of the Dutch population, and tea contributes 55%. Epidemiological assessments of health effects of tea should include other foods that are sources of catechins. (Lancet)

Hopefully you'll live a very very long time or it might just seem like a long life. The problem with anti-aging instead of reverse aging is that you'd better love the age you are because you ain't getting any younger. Don't like your age - aww poor baby! Too bady if you're lucky you get to stay this age forever. Or it might just seem like forever.

Green Tea Catechin Consumption Enhances Exercise-Induced Abdominal Fat Loss in Overweight and Obese Adults - These findings suggest that green tea catechin consumption enhances exercise-induced changes in abdominal fat and serum TG. The American Society for Nutrition (ASN)

Chocolate solves the known green tea reactions that individuals on some high blood pressure medications can suffer from their use - without any of negative side effects associated with green tea. Chocolate is the "couch-er" final solution. Chocolate - the weight loss answer that we've waited a lifetime to receive. You don't have to be a researcher to reach that conclusion.

Oh, by the way, don't just dump your chocolate drops in your blender and hope for the best. Nuke 'em in your microwave until their soft enough to dissolve and be digested. Learn from our mistakes!

Chocolate Heart Health

Chocolate saves a heart from breaking and now every news report is saying the same thing without asking the same question on aspirin - "How much is enough?" The Stockholm/Boston report says that even a little is better than none but with our obese lifestyle any excuse is a good excuse to eat chocolate. Not any candy mind you, the review of the data says it must be chocolate. We're giving "kisses" as our wedding favors and its great to know we're being life savers even if we didn't consciously make the decision.

We can only access the free abstract which says: "Chocolate consumption was associated with lower cardiac mortality in a dose dependent manner in patients free of diabetes surviving their first AMI. Although our findings support increasing evidence that chocolate is a rich source of beneficial bioactive compounds, confirmation of this strong inverse relationship from other observational studies or large-scale, long-term, controlled randomized trials is needed."

From the very same Journal of Internal Medicine is a cautionary article publised earlier in the year: "The epidemic of obesity took off from about 1980 and in almost all countries has been rising inexorably ever since. Only in 1997 did WHO accept that this was a major public health problem and, even then, there was no accepted method for monitoring the problem in children."

While the reference is to Asia, Latin America and others to Swedish men obesity is a local problem with deadly consequences. Chocolate seems an easy solution to us the very lazy. Anything but diet and exercise and anytime the suggestion is adding chocolate to the mix whether it's coffee or candy - its the right perscription. A couple of kisses every other day sounds like just about the right amount IF we were to self medicate and we won't. We do have some extras though. There is a bag on the side of the bed so until their gone - what can it hurt?

While the review was of heart attack survivors the: "(o)bjectives. To assess the long-term effects of chocolate consumption amongst patients with established coronary heart disease. Design. In a population-based inception cohort study, we followed 1169 non-diabetic patients hospitalized with a confirmed first acute myocardial infarction (AMI) between 1992 and 1994 in Stockholm County, Sweden, as part of the Stockholm Heart Epidemiology Program." The news is reporting this as newest, greatest, latest health information clearly it isn't but we suggest that everyone use caution when following any advice, including ours.