Cocoa Lowers Blood Pressure, Tea Does Not

A new study just released from researchers in Germany shows that cocoa can be linked to lowering blood pressure, but tea cannot be.

The new study has just been published in the 'Archives of Internal Medicine' a journal produced by the 'American Medical Association'. The study was carried out at the University Hospital of Cologne in Germany at its Department of Pharmacology.

The study involved endless hours of investigating over 40 years of medical information about how cocoa, green tea and black tea affected blood pressure. Certain medical information such as trials on adults that tested how cocoa, green tea and black tea affected them were looked at with more interest.

When looking at a selected group of cocoa trials the German researched discovered some interesting information. The two levels of heart pumping were investigated. These are systolic, the higher reading and pressure and diastolic the lower reading of when the heart relaxes.

The information revealed that subjects who had consumered cocoa had much lower systolic and diastolic blood pressures. The results were significant enough to convince the researchers that cocoa could certainly be linked to lowering blood pressure.

A similar investigation was carried out on a selected group of tea trials on adults. It was found that subjects who consumed tea did have lowered systolic and diastolic blood pressure, but only by a fraction. This difference was so small that it could not be used to link tea to lowered blood pressure.

The results as stated by the researchers was, "current randomised dietary studies indicate that consumption of food rich in cocoa may reduce blood pressure, while tea intake appears to have no effect."

This conclusion is found even though cocoa and tea both contain high levels of polyphenols. It is now thought that the different types of polyphenols must be considered. For example cocoa contains a high amounts of the polyphenol called procyanids, something tea does not have.

However, the researchers did point out that this was not an excuse to go out and eat lots of chocolate and that the study has used very controlled factors that require further investigation. Not all chocolate is helpful either. The chocolate that does help must be high in flavonoid content. Flavonoids are almost always taken out of cocoa in the manufacturing processes of chocolate because it can cause the chocolate to have a bitter taste. It is also not yet known how other contents of chocolate such as milk and sugar affect the benefits of the cocoa.

Nonetheless the findings are very interesting and may lead to a way of producing a healthy chocolate that will certainly be very popular.

The study is titled 'Effect of Cocoa and Tea Intake on Blood Pressure'. It was carried out by three German researchers; Dirk Taubert, Renate Roesen and Edgar Schomig.

Sources
http://www.scenta.co.uk/scenta/news.cfm?cit_id=1687437&FAArea1=widgets.content_view_1
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/healthnews.php?newsid=67414
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070409/us_nm/heart_cocoa_dc