Does the Kina tribe in Panama live longer because they drink lots of cocoa? Maybe.
The health benefits of epicatechin, a compound found in cocoa, are so striking that it may rival penicillin and anaesthesia in terms of importance to public health, reports Marina Murphy in Chemistry & Industry, the magazine of the SCI. Norman Hollenberg, professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, told C&I that epicatechin is so important that it should be considered a vitamin.
Hollenberg has spent years studying the benefits of cocoa drinking on the Kuna people in Panama. He found that the risk of 4 of the 5 most common killer diseases: stroke, heart failure, cancer and diabetes, is reduced to less then 10% in the Kuna. They can drink up to 40 cups of cocoa a week. Natural cocoa has high levels of epicatechin.
'If these observations predict the future, then we can say without blushing that they are among the most important observations in the history of medicine,' Hollenberg says. ‘We all agree that penicillin and anaesthesia are enormously important. But epicatechin could potentially get rid of 4 of the 5 most common diseases in the western world, how important does that make epicatechin?... I would say very important’
The best way to get rid of the most common degenerative diseases is to develop rejuvenation therapies using stem cells, gene therapy, nanobots, and other methods to totally repair all the damage caused by aging. But if we can slow aging down with cocoa I'll take it while waiting for the methods that'll reverse aging.
The Kuna are drinking cocoa, not eating chocolate.
Among the Kuna people of Panama, who can drink up to 40 cups of cocoa per week, rates of stroke, heart disease, cancer and diabetes are less than 10%.
The Kuna also appear to live longer than other Panama inhabitants and do not get dementia, a US scientist reports in Chemistry and Industry.
This is an observational study. But I'm going to try to put cocoa into apple sauce more often.
Anyone know the best food source for epicatechin?
By Randall Parker at 2007 March 13 12:39 AM Aging Diet Studies | TrackBackI don't know the best source of epicatechin, but I was in a Whole Foods market buying Vitamn D :) and they were sampling a cocoa drink. It was pretty good despite that it was unsweetened. I looked at one of the bags they were selling. It looked like unprocessed chunks.
unfortunately, the tiny bag was about $9 per. I guess I have to go down to Panama and seek tribal adoption or just die early without the stuff.
Sydney, over at Medpundit, raises the same questions as I did (to myself only) about this study... take a look before you get too caught up in cacao hype.
Well medpundit raises some good questions, but none of them disprove what evidence there is to support cocoa consumption. Quite a bit of it on medscape as it is.
In regards to the raw cocoa, mixed with raw walnuts, raisins and sunflower seeds makes for a tasty, and longer lasting treat. There is another company from new york selling the whole pods, and boy are they delicious.
I put a question mark on my post because I think life extension is hard stuff to achieve.
The best way to live longer is to avoid stuff that agees you more rapidly (bad food, bad air, sustained stress, etc).
I am uncertain whether there is a wonder compound that'll make us live longer. But I figure such wonder compounds might exist for the following reason: Our metabolism has been optimized to make us reproduce. If we could shift our metabolism to reallocate metabolic resources we ought to be able to live longer. There's considerable evidence that some compounds in food, by up-regulating enzymes that break down toxins, reduce the risks of some diseases including cancers.
Does cocoa put our metabolism into a state that causes it to allocate more activity toward longer term survival?
Hi Randall,
Thanks for bringing this study to our attention.
You observed, in what seemed to be a cautionary tone, "The Kuna are drinking cocoa, not eating chocolate." I do understand that the linked article names the drink the Kuna consume "cocoa"; however, in skimming the article, I didn't see mention of the way they prepare the drink. It seems we'll have to find details as to the drink's preparation in order to know how it's similar to and different from our own familiar "cocoa" drink, "cocoa powder," and "chocolate." At any rate, your raising the issue is useful.
Thanks,
Doug
I agree with Doug above. I have scoured the internet looking for USEFUL information about the details of the preparation and contents of the Kuna cacao drink. Seemingly nobody has useful information or wants to state anything even remotely helpful to understanding the phenomenon.
Most websites (those with an understanding of health below the level of Ray Kurzweil) just state something like: "Keep in mind that this doesn't mean that the sugar and fat that are added to chocolate are healthy!" Well, ...duuuuhhhhh!
What about someone who is above subnormal intelligence, who has found Stevia (in spite of the FDA's best attempts to murder us all before our time), and unsweetened soymilk, and lecithin (containing phosphatidyl choline)? What if we want to make our own INTELLIGENT CHOCOLATE FOOD IN OUR OWN HOMES, CHOCOLATE THAT CONTAINS NOTHING UNHEALTHY???!!! Why can't just a few futurists/doctors/health bloggers write something useful about the Kuna cacao study?
I guess I'll just need to find a copy of the actual study itself, since the people writing about it are such tools.
Among the questions that have been begged in virtually every article I've read on "Kuna Cacao" (but not answered in any of them) are:
1) Does the Kuna Cacao drink contain milk, sugar, or any other ingredient other than cacao nibs and water?
2) Are the nibs/raw cacao pieces suspended in the water, or steeped in the water?
3) Is the drink served cold, hot, or both?
4) Is the drink bitter, mild, what consistency is it? (Does anyone have a @#*$%! picture??????!!!!!!!!!!!!! I mean, can anybody get a $100 digital camera, or even a $10 disposable camera, and document the phenomenon that could save over 100,000(x10) lives a year in the wealthy, western, developed world? Would that be toooooo much to ask?)
5) What is the path/process from the vine to the cup that the Kuna cacao follows? I've read that it's "minimally processed" More minimally than normal (for local consumption) (normally cacao is fermented, do the Kuna skip the fermentation?, is it fresh off the vine? What?), or just "more minimally-processed" than factory-processed western cacao?
6) Is the Kuna cacao roasted or raw?
7) Do they include more of the cacao nut than usual?
8) If it is an infusion that they drink, do they keep the solids and eat them later?
9) How much of the "good stuff" is in the infusion, and how much in the solids?
10) Is an infusion (or wet mixture) necessary to facilitate proper absorbtion?
11) If a wet mixture is applied to the skin, how much of the "good stuff" epicatechin and other antioxidants and flavonoids is absorbed into the bloodstream? How much into the actual skin cells?
I hope I've given the people at Mars Inc. some research ideas! If they want to pay me silly sums of travel and research money to get the answers, I'd be more than happy to get right on it. Otherwise, I beg and plead those who have an intelligent picture of health to get on this one! :D
For two such intelligent (and mutually compatible) views, I recommend "Fantastic Voyage" by Ray Kurzweil, and "Ending Aging" by Aubrey De Grey. kurzweil and de Grey are both easy to find on the web. http://www.kurzweilai.net http://www.fantastic-voyage.net
If anyone finds ANY answers to the above questions I will be very grateful (I eat a lot of chocolate, and am trying to make my own healthier chocolate at home --so far, the stuff from the store is still better, but I'm getting very close). Please send any answers to jcwitmer@hotmail.com or just post them above.
Thanks!
-Jake
Perhaps, Jake, it is not for "the wealthy, western, developed world" to know...(greedy jerks we've been, on the whole).
Really, we know that humans around the globe developed as one part of their unique environments, with Nature providing all the foods and medicines and such appropriate to survial in the different environments...and Modern Westerners did not respect their new chunk o' Earth the way the First Peoples did, so perhaps "the wealthy, western, developed world" does not "deserve" to know such mysteries...just my own opinion.
Nonetheless, i hope that those who respect the Earth may, indeed, benefit from any of Her many gifts by figuring things out for themselves. Perhaps certain "wonder" plants don't jive with the chemistry of people not from the plant's homeland anyhow? (ie., will Gogi berries even benefit non-Himalayans?)
i don't offer a recipe (but as i said, maybe it's a secret!) ...but it obviously has something to do with the hot water in the drink causing a reaction with the epicatechin, as is with certain teas:
It is concluded that epicatechin epimers in tea drinks are not originally present in green tea leaf but are instead derived from thermal conversion of GTEs:
The present study was carried out to quantify green tea epicatechin (GTE) derivatives and to investigate the origin of epicatechin epimers present in 18 selected canned or bottled tea drinks. The major GTEs present in tea are (-)-epigallocatechin gallate (EGCG), (-)-epigallocatechin (EGC), (-)-epicatechin gallate (ECG) and (-)-epicatechin (EC). HPLC analysis showed that the content of total GTEs was lower (16.4-268.3 mg l-1) in the canned and bottled tea drinks than in tea traditionally prepared as a beverage in a cup or teapot (3-5 g l-1). The major finding was that they contained higher levels of epicatechin epimers, namely (-)-gallocatechin gallate (GCG), (-)-gallocatechin (GC), catechin gallate (CG) and (-)-catechin (C), than of GTEs, ranging from 7.6 to 331.8 mg l-1. To investigate the origin of these epimers, GTEs were extracted from longjing green tea and autoclaved at various temperatures for 10-60 min. It was found that at least 50% of GTEs were epimerised to their corresponding epimers when autoclaved at 120 °C for 20 min. It is concluded that epicatechin epimers in tea drinks are not originally present in green tea leaf but are instead derived from thermal conversion of GTEs. Copyright © 2003 Society of Chemical Industry
hmmmmm....or, perhaps epicatechin is "metaphorically" (or, in a kind-of homeopathic way) the same as spirit/happiness/peace...
So, it is just analogous/homologus that the people indigenous to areas where there are plants containing epicatechin, are happier, more calm, and have their priorities the right way up, "causing" them to have less stress and heart disease and age-related illnesses?
yep, that's my theory!
:)
Hmmm. No. I'm not looking for a mystical answer, I'm looking for a practical answer. I don't believe in god, or in worshipping trees and primitivism, but I'm a big believer in atoms, molecules, biological functionality, evolution and capitalism. (I suppose that was redundant, since capitalism IS a subset of evolution, as a voluntary marketplace). The answer I'm looking for involves substances, specific information about them, and where I can get them. Thanks.