Whether consuming cocoa, which is known to be filled with powerful antioxidants that protect our cells from damage, helps us age better is a question scientists definitely want to answer.
They’re looking for answers in the blood of 600 people age 60 and over who participated in the largest study to date to look at the effects of a cocoa supplement, as well as a common multivitamin, on reducing the risk of heart disease, stroke, cancer, and other health outcomes, says Dr . Yanbin Dong, geneticist and cardiologist at the Georgia Prevention Institute at the Medical College of Georgia.
The COcoa Supplement and Multivitamin Outcomes Study (COSMOS), led by researchers from Brigham and Women’s Hospital and the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, collected data from 21,444 men and women on the effects of a cocoa extract supplement and / or Multivitamins address general health problems, most of which increase with age.
Dong has just received a $ 3 million grant from the National Institutes of Health to conduct a detailed analysis of inflammatory factors and genetic changes associated with aging to see if cocoa consumption reduces these factors.
Cocoa products have become a “common food” with still growing demand and increasing interest in their antiaging potential, says Dong.
“People think that chocolate is good for you,” says Dong, adding that the global craze for the sweet treat has overtaken the scientific evidence of its human benefit.
Chocolate is widely considered beneficial because it is high in flavanols, antioxidants that are known to produce a powerful anti-inflammatory response. In fact, flavanols are the main ingredient, especially in dark chocolate, and cocoa is a purer form of chocolate, Dong says.
There is no question that flavanols are good for you, the question is how much and in what ways are they good, he says.
While there has been evidence of cocoa’s anti-inflammatory effects in cell cultures, animal models, and even some relatively small human studies, there have not been large-scale randomized controlled trials, scientific studies in which large numbers of participants happen to be in different study arms that include some participants, receiving placebo and / or other treatment, often what is considered the current standard of care.
Dong notes that there is also no solid evidence that multivitamins, the most widely used dietary supplement widely associated with benefits such as reduced cancer risk, are also beneficial.
While he doesn’t deny the biological plausibility that both chocolate and multivitamins should have some health benefit, he says there should be solid scientific evidence behind what we put into our bodies to improve our health.
“We’ll prove it or deny it,” he says, and the scope and duration of the COSMOS test allow him to do both.
Dong and his colleagues will look specifically at aging, including what is known as “inflammaging” and epigenetic aging, both of which are considered good indicators of our biological age. Rather than just looking at the year of birth, biological age also takes into account key factors that affect your function and health, such as genetics and lifestyle. He also has more standard aging measures for these people, such as blood pressure and cognitive function tests.
Inflammation is a major contributor to aging and common conditions such as heart attacks, strokes, Alzheimer’s, and cancer, and “inflammation” has been characterized as a chronic, mild inflammation that is likely to increase the risk of these inflammatory-related diseases.
Epigenetic changes, such as DNA methylation, which can be good or bad and caused by environmental factors, including the foods we eat, are changes in the physical structure of DNA that affect gene expression and ultimately what ours Genes do, including deactivating them. Epigenetic changes are now considered a strong predictor of life and health as well as susceptibility to disease and death, says Dong.
Dong will analyze the levels of key pro and anti-inflammatory factors at baseline and in the first and second years of the COSMOS study in the blood of those who take the cocoa supplement, a multivitamin, both or neither. He will also perform sophisticated, extensive genetic analysis to look for genetic changes that correlate with aging and use “epigenetic clocks” that can calculate biological age based on the amount of DNA methylation.
His work will have the added benefit of better defining the benefits of multivitamins, a top supplement that many only use because they think it’s good for them.
Inflammation can be objectively assessed by measurements such as blood levels of C-reactive protein, a type of biomarker of inflammation made by the liver that can increase dramatically with inflammation. Dong compares the C-reactive protein level that doctors regularly measure with a Geiger counter for the immune response. He will also evaluate levels of tumor necrosis factor alpha, which, as the name suggests, is an inflammatory cytokine that attacks cancer and other invaders, but can be problematic at elevated levels. He will also measure the levels of anti-inflammatory markers such as interleukin-10 or IL-10 and then examine the interaction between the inflammatory response and epigenetic aging, for example whether the genes that regulate IL-10 expression also increase DNA methylation and whether blood pressure goes down, it reduces inflammation, or it changes methylation first.
The researchers’ central hypothesis is that cocoa supplementation reduces epigenetic aging and inflammation, and consequently reduces the risk of cardiovascular disease, the national number one killer, which tends to increase at the age of 65 and older. When they find that the indicators of inflammation and cardiovascular disease are reduced, they want to know if reducing epigenetic changes is driving the improvements.
Dark chocolate in particular is regularly touted for its health benefits as a natural and good source of antioxidants, as well as iron, copper, and other things that are good for your heart and health. Eating chocolate has been reported to lower cholesterol, blood pressure, cognitive decline, and boost the immune response to intruders like the coronavirus, Dong says.
Foods and beverages like grapes and red wine, tomatoes, onions, berries, and peaches are also good sources of flavanols.
Surveys show that the majority of American adults use a dietary supplement, with consumption being higher in women than men and overall consumption increasing with age, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Multivitamins are a popular supplement.
Dong’s collaborators on the new studies include the COSMOS main examiners, Dr. JoAnn E. Manson and Dr. Howard D. Sesso of Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard University.
To like
love
Haha
Impressive
sad
Upset
source https://www.bisayanews.com/2021/09/14/can-cocoa-consumption-help-us-age-better-jagwire/
No comments:
Post a Comment