Chocolate and Diabetes
January 17, 2012
If you have gone through the previous blog posts, you’ve probably read about the astonishing nutritional benefits that chocolate has to offer. Recent studies found out that chocolate, because of the flavonoids it contains, are helpful to diabetic women.
But a lot of chocoholics are still not aware about the goodness of these flavonoids. As a matter of fact, according to the experts from the University of East Anglia, females who are suffering from type 2 diabetes can actually avoid certain heart diseases when they adhere to a flavonoid-rich diet.
These useful substances called flavonoids are usually found in berries, tea, and yes, chocolate. In a recent experiment conducted, 93 post-menopausal women who were diagnosed with type 2 diabetes took part. Half of the group was asked to consume 2 bars of chocolate loaded with flavonoids everyday, while the other half was given chocolate that only contained placebo.
Results showed that those women who ate flavonoid-rich chocolate were 3.4% less likely to have cardiovascular problems till the successive decade. This outcome was found to be very essential when it comes to dietary intervention for diabetic women. Additionally, those who consumed extra flavonoids had considerable lower insulin and cholesterol levels.
Lead researcher, Professor Aedin Cassidy of the Department of Nutrition, Norwich Medical School at UEA, said: "These results are significant from a public health perspective because they provide further concrete evidence that diet has a beneficial clinical effect over and above conventional drug treatment."
The flavonoids that were utilized in this particular study consisted of two subtypes. First one is flavan-3-ols which was a usual component of tea or cocoa, while the other one is called isoflavones and usually found in soy.
Nevertheless, you apparently can’t devour all the chocolates stocked in your fridge in one sitting just because of this. Keep in mind that the chocolates used in this study are way too different from those that you can buy in the market today.
"Chronic ingestion of flavon-3-ols and isoflavones improves insulin sensitivity and lipoprotein status and attenuates estimated 10-year CVD risk in medicated postmenopausal women with type 2 diabetes: a one year double-blind randomized controlled trial" is published in the journal entitled Diabetes Care.
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