Highest chocolate consumption = 37% reduction of CVD

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Molten chocolate and a piece of a chocolate bar (Wiki)

New meta study:

Chocolate consumption and cardiometabolic disorders: systematic review and meta-analysis

Quote:

Results
From 4576 references seven studies met the inclusion criteria (including 114 009 participants). None of the studies was a randomised trial, six were cohort studies, and one a cross sectional study. Large variation was observed between these seven studies for measurement of chocolate consumption, methods, and outcomes evaluated. Five of the seven studies reported a beneficial association between higher levels of chocolate consumption and the risk of cardiometabolic disorders. The highest levels of chocolate consumption were associated with a 37% reduction in cardiovascular disease (relative risk 0.63 (95% confidence interval 0.44 to 0.90)) and a 29% reduction in stroke compared with the lowest levels.

Conclusions
Based on observational evidence, levels of chocolate consumption seem to be associated with a substantial reduction in the risk of cardiometabolic disorders. ...

(Click to open large jpg)

A few questions to ponder:

- Is it a real effect or are we witnessing a coincidental correlation, for example the "wealth" effect?

- If real, which factor contributed the most? One can think of several possible such as (a) cardiovascular-protective effects of coconut and cocoa butter, (b) resveratrol, (c) substitution of more harmful snacks and drinks (soda, beer etc), or some other yet unknown factor present in chocolate?

- What is the consumption quantity or threshold to produce a given effect.  (The study did not have the means to quantify chocolate consumption in physical units, due to the lack of published data).

- Since the cardioprotective effect is comparable if not higher than the hugely popular statin drugs (according to the mainstream but questionable studies), it would be interesting to notice how eagerly will medical science community rush to conduct more studies on this topic.  I am not holding my breath.

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Added 15-Sep-2011

Chocolate 'as good for you as exercise'


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Fat disrupts sugar sensors in pancreas causing type 2 diabetes

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That's why a diet simultanously high in fat and carbs is detrimental, but a diet high in either one and not both, is not!

See on BBC health:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-14503480

(Source: "Pathway to diabetes through attenuation of pancreatic beta cell glycosylation and glucose transport")

This is important finding that clears a lot of confusion. I used to answer countless of questions from diabetics (on other forums), the most frequent was this, paraphrasing:

"Why should I eat high fat diet if we know that it would increase my already high insulin resistance?"

This article is telling us that the answer to this is that it won't!

It will make pancreas stop reacting to blood glucose while you are eating fat AND carbohydrates at the same time. This won't matter you eat fat on its own with very little or no carbs! On the other hand, diabetic insulin resistance appears in this light to be a totally different phenomenon - related to body tissues and organs being permanently resistant to insulin that is already produced by pancreas and circulating throughout the body!

Will fat affect the tissue insulin resistance as well? Yes - probably by reducing it!  As me and millions of other people who tried Dr. Jan Kwasniewski's Optimal Diet, have found!

We are probably dealing here with two opposing effects:

1) Detrimental effect of dietary fat upon pancreas preventing it from reacting to blood glucose
(Which matters if and only if one consumes significant amount of carbohydrates together and simultaneously with fat).

2) Positive long term effect of dietary fat upon body tissues and organs

Can a fatty meal impair cardiovascular health? Absolutely, since it can lead to hyperglycemia due to (1) if the meal is also high in carbs  (I will pass that carrot cake, thank you...)

Can a high fat meal reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease (see this)? Absolutely! If it is low in carbohydrates!

This clarifies also another issue, namely Dr. Kwasniewski's claim that a diet with 35-45% fat by calories is the most detrimental to one's health (for adults). It makes a lot more sense in the light of this article. (Note: since a diet typically would contain 10-20% protein, therefore 35-45% fat means 35-55% carbohydrates, by calories).

Bottom line:
- Do not mix high carbohydrate diet with high fat nutrition!

------------ Update 30-Aug-2011 -------------------

Read this:

Fat and Diabetes: Bad Press, Good Paper, and the Reemergence of Our Good Friend Glutathione


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Warning MS C++ 2010 runtime upgrade breaks ATI graphics drivers! (off-topic)

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I appologise for this quick off-topic warning post, but this info might save many of you from throwing out a perfectly good ATI Radeon 4xxx series that suddenly stopped working.  I use ATI HD4670 in Win7 32bit, but this may apply also to other series of ATI cards.

A very recent upgrade of Microsoft C++ run-time library version 2011.0.30xx to 2011.0.40xx (Win7 32bit) breaks ATI Radeon graphics drivers. The symptoms are similar to when a graphic card breaks due to a hardware failure, that is screen goes suddenly black during a boot up, in high resolution large screen mode, while it may still be working when booted in the "safe mode".

I haven't tracked down yet where that .40 upgrade came from but I have determined it by multiple trial and errors beyond reasonable doubt that it is caused by the Windows 7 system run-time library incompatibility.

To fix the problem:

1) If your screen is already black, shut down, remove ATI Radeon graphics card, plug in some other card (Nvidia or something much older, even a standard VGA will do). Reboot.

2) Open Control Panel, Programs and Features - Check if you have MS C++ 2010.0.40xx Run-time installed. If yes then uninstall it.

3) Go to www.amd.com go to ATI Radeon downloads section, download and install "ATI Catalyst Center" (this will install all necessary graphics drivers for the ATI Radeon series) . I installed an older version (10.12) but the most recent one (11.7) should also work They all install MS C++ 2010.0.30 run-time library, as part of their overall installation process - verify the log that it was installed OK! If you forgot to uninstall version 40 then this step of "ATI Catalyst" installation will report a failure!

4) Shut down the PC, remove the old graphics card, reinstall ATI Radeon, restart.
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