Cocoa might do more than just satisfy your sweet tooth—it may help protect against high blood pressure, at least in some people.
A large new study has found that taking cocoa extract daily could reduce the risk of developing high blood pressure, but only in people who already have normal blood pressure.
The study was published in the journal Hypertension and was carried out by researchers from Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School. It involved over 21,000 older adults, including women aged 65 and older and men aged 60 and older.
The researchers wanted to know if cocoa flavanols—natural compounds found in cocoa—could help prevent high blood pressure, also known as hypertension. This condition affects millions of people worldwide and is a leading cause of heart disease and stroke.
Participants were randomly assigned to take either cocoa extract with multivitamins or a placebo that had no active ingredients. Out of the total group, 8,905 participants did not have high blood pressure at the start of the study.
These were the ones the researchers paid special attention to when looking at who developed high blood pressure over the next 3.4 years.
The main finding? Cocoa extract didn’t lower the risk of high blood pressure for everyone. The number of new cases was almost the same in both the cocoa group and the placebo group.
But when researchers looked only at people whose systolic blood pressure was below 120 mm Hg at the beginning, they noticed something interesting. In this group, cocoa extract reduced the chance of developing high blood pressure by 24%.
For people whose starting systolic blood pressure was between 120 and 139 mm Hg, the cocoa extract had no effect.
The benefits started to show after about two years of taking the supplement. This suggests cocoa might help keep blood vessels healthy and prevent early rises in blood pressure, rather than treat it after it starts.
No serious side effects were reported during the study, and the cocoa extract used contained only a small amount of the active compounds—much less than the amount of cocoa used in chocolate treats.
The study was funded in part by companies with interests in cocoa and nutrition—Mars Edge and Pfizer—which the researchers disclosed.
In summary, cocoa extract is not a cure for high blood pressure, but it could help protect people with healthy blood pressure from developing hypertension in the future. More research is needed, but these findings offer hope for simple ways to support heart health as we age.
If you care about blood pressure, please read studies about the ideal blood pressure for older people and common high blood pressure drugs may cause memory problems.
For more health information, please read studies about A common blood pressure medication that could help you live longer and 1 in 5 people with high blood pressure takes a medication that harms blood pressure.
The study is published in Hypertension.
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