What Healthy-Heart Lessons Can We Learn from Panama’s Kuna
Indians?
Researchers have known for some time that flavonol-rich foods such as vegetables and fruits benefit the heart. The mechanism of action behind these heart-protective compounds is that, when ingested, they trigger the release of nitric oxide, which relaxes arteries and blood vessels. This is turn allows arteries to accommodate changes in blood flow, keeping blood pressure normal. Impaired function of arteries, a key event in atherosclerosis, is characterized by decreased nitric oxide production and poor vasodilation (the expansion of arteries to accommodate blood flow changes).
Results of a study published in the January 24, 2006 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, showed that when healthy male adults drank flavonol-rich cocoa, there were dramatic elevations in circulating nitric oxide. This study underscores the important role lifestyle factors and diet play in the incidence of heart disease.
On the Way to the Kuna Indians.
To further prove the beneficial effects of cocoa on the cardiovascular
system, the researchers traveled to an island off the coast of Panama where
the Kuna Indians live. Why the Kuna Indians? Because they have only minimal
increases in blood pressure with age, and hypertension and other cardiovascular
diseases are rare. The factors involved are mostly dietary and not genetic,
since the researchers discovered that this protection is lost once they’ve
moved to mainland Panama City where they subsist on a Western diet low in
cocoa intakes. The key contributing factor to their good heart health
is that they consume large amounts of flavonol-rich cocoa, which is about
3-4 cups per day.
Other foods rich in flavonoids are broccoli, onions, and tea, but cocoa has the highest concentration of flavonoids. You’d have to consume quite a bit of onions and broccoli to get the amount of flavonoids contains in cocoa. Chocolate also contains flavonoids, but it contains high amounts of fat. What makes cocoa different is that the fat is squeezed out of it.
When asked about stress and dietary factors, the author of the study said, “They don’t explain the pattern {of reduced blood pressure}. He added, ‘You take all the known environmental factors and put them together, and they don’t bring blood pressure that low. Therefore, it really is something special about eating these flavonoids.” Blood pressure typically rises with age. But the average blood pressure for Kuna Indians over the age of 60 is 110/70, which is the normal range.(1) According to the National Institutes of Health’s National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, more than 50% of American 60 and older have high blood pressure.
References:
1. PNAS
| January 24, 2006 | vol. 103 | no. 4 | 1024-1029