8 Incredible Benefits of Adding High Flavanol Cocoa Powder to Your Daily Routine

With High Flavanol Cacao’s popularity as a health food only growing in recent years, you may have already heard about some of the main benefits adding it to your daily routine can provide. Larger bullet points like boosted cardiovascular and cognitive health, improved workout recovery, and even reduced risk of disease categories like cancer and diabetes are becoming more and more well known, but what do these claims mean exactly? What are the actual mechanisms inside our bodies that cacao’s nutrients can affect to bring us a healthier and more energetic daily life? Read on for a deeper dive into eight specific examples:

As the name suggests, high flavanol cacao’s main function as a powerful antioxidant is to help reduce oxidative stress in the body. This is crucial for health in nearly all categories due to how oxidative stress can damage bodily structures from cells to proteins and fats and even DNA, thus leading to diseases like cancer. 

The main way high flavanol cocoa does this is by neutralizing molecules called free radicals, which occur naturally through processes like digestion and exercise but can also emerge due to factors like smoking and poor diet. By getting rid of these free radicals, cacao not only works to prevent the root cause of damage to these structures, but can also help combat inflammation throughout the body as well.

Key Takeaways:

• High flavanol cacao can help prevent damage to cells and reduce oxidative stress

• High flavanol cacao can also help reduce inflammation by similar mechanisms

Among the most discussed ways high flavanol cocoa can improve both your post-workout recovery and your daily health generally is through improving blood flow. The powerful antioxidant capacity of cocoa flavanols allows it to serve as a vasodilator, ensuring your blood vessels are able to respond to increased stress, physical or otherwise. 

In particular, cocoa flavanols can help enhance what is called flow-mediated dilation, or FMD, making your blood vessels more easily able to expand or contract as increased or decreased blood flow is needed. Studies into high flavanol cacao’s effect on FMD have found improvements in both healthy subjects as well as those facing one or more existing risk factors, showing cacao has the potential to boost your blood flow no matter what your health goals are.

Key Takeaways:

• High flavanol cacao can help improve blood flow and workout recovery

• High flavanol cacao helps the blood vessels stay dilated during periods of strain

Another of high flavanol cacao’s often-cited benefits is its ability to help lower blood pressure, which studies suggest it can do by helping maintain optimal levels of bodily nitric oxide. It does this via some of the same mechanisms discussed already, acting as an antioxidant and neutralizing free radicals, while also directly activating the enzyme that produces it.

Increasing nitric oxide production improves circulation, helps white blood cells kill bacteria and viruses, and even keeps your mind sharp by allowing nerves to communicate. By directly aiding in its production and bioavailability, cocoa flavanols are a boost in more ways than one.

Key Takeaways:

• High flavanol cacao can help reduce and maintain a healthy blood pressure

• High flavanol cacao does this by promoting nitric oxide production in the body

Another cardiovascular benefit of high flavanol cocoa powder that may be less discussed is arterial flexibility. Where vasodilation is the expansion of blood vessels during periods that necessitate higher blood flow, arterial flexibility refers to the stretching of blood vessels to move blood with each heartbeat. 

Broadly, this is another mechanism that allows the body to relax and maintain  stable blood pressure, meaning powerful antioxidants like high flavanol cacao can be quite helpful. Studies correlate lower blood pressure in those regularly consuming high flavanol cocoa powder. There have also been studies proving improvements in several important markers like cholesterol and insulin resistance specifically for those at risk of cardiovascular diseases like hypertension and type two diabetes as well.

Key Takeaways:

• High flavanol cacao can help keep arteries flexible for moment-to-moment blood flow

• High flavanol cacao can reduce risk of hypertension and type two diabetes

Stem cell proliferation is a very important bodily process in which stem cells that live in specific tissues or organs multiply and become all the different types of cells that tissue or organ needs. Though it has not yet been widely replicated in humans, there is promising research that suggests cacao flavanols can promote this as well, specifically in the bone marrow where blood cells are created and differentiated into their various types.

This, of course, is an extremely important job for the body to perform when cells get damaged or there is a need for more of a certain kind. With less productive stem cells, the body would be far less equipped to heal or fight infection when necessary, and the powerful nutrients in cacao may be able to assist.

Key Takeaways:

• High flavanol cacao may assist in proliferation of stem cells in the bone marrow

• High flavanol cacao may help production of blood cells for fighting infection

While antioxidants cannot directly clear arteries or break down and remove arterial plaque, the cardiovascular health effects of foods like high flavanol cacao can absolutely help prevent its formation in the first place. Given that many of the biggest risk factors for arterial plaque are those conditions flavanols help combat, such as diabetes, high cholesterol, and high blood pressure, this only makes sense.

Even when controlling for consumption of other antioxidant-rich foods, studies have found an association between consumption of cacao flavanols and lower levels of calcified arterial plaque, or CAC. While this again does not mean cacao removed existing plaque in these subjects, it does suggest regular consumption can put you at a lower risk of the plaque forming in the first place.

Key Takeaways:

• High flavanol cacao can help prevent buildup of arterial plaque

• High flavanol cacao may do this better than other antioxidant-rich foods

Though high flavanol cacao’s cardiovascular health effects are among its most well-known and studied, its effects on cognitive health are just as vital. Much research has been done to show the superfood’s ability to reduce age-based cognitive decline, and many trials indicate adding cacao to your daily routine can help both young and old in areas like focus and executive function.

Cacao can have these effects for the same reasons it can improve blood flow, as blood and blood vessels carry oxygen throughout the body including to the brain. This process is crucial in cases up to and including severe hypoxia, where high flavanol cacao can be of help in protecting brain oxygenation as well as cognitive function and preventing fatigue.

Key Takeaways:

• High flavanol cacao can help reduce age-based cognitive decline

• High flavanol cacao can help keep the brain oxygenated even during severe hypoxia

Finally, high flavanol cacao is simply an excellent source of the specific flavanol epicatechin, the naturally-occurring plant compound largely responsible for all the health effects discussed here and more. In research, it has been most often touted for its potency as an antioxidant and anti-inflammatory agent, which nearly every benefit of cacao you can hear about stems from.

Epicatechin has been used therapeutically in conditions ranging from simple inflammation to ischemia, diabetes, cancer, and even age-based neurodegeneration. In addition, its supplementation has been consistently linked to no major side effects when used moderately. Anyone looking to boost their nutrient intake should have their eye on epicatechin and high flavanol cacao. Vital Purple’s flagship purple cacao powder contains over 228 mg per serving, a high mark for the industry.

Key Takeaways:

• High flavanol cacao contains the nutrients to assist with a whole host of conditions

• High flavanol cocoa can be of therapeutic help with ischemia, diabetes, cancer, and more

• Vital Purple is not formulated to look good for marketing, the main purpose is to use technology and an innovative process to effectively preserve the naturally occurring flavanols in special cacao. 

• Vital Purple is the only purple cacao powder in the world because the fermentation process is prevented. This prevention in fermentation also preserves the flavanols more effectively than other High Flavanol Cocoa Powder

• Vital Purple has the highest amount of flavanols per gram and per serving of any high flavanol cacao powder in the world. Other brands use synthetic extracts from China for their cocoa flavanols. Vital Purple uses innovation to retain what nature has to offer before processing. 

• Vital Purple is organic, and 1 ingredient. It also competes well on price and is incredibly transparent with their testing.

Sources:

Reduced Oxidative Stress: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32185628/

Improved Flow-Mediated Dilation: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5539137/

Boosted Nitric Oxide Production: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3022066/

Improved Arterial Flexibility: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8031944/

Potential Stem Cell Proliferation: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15491098/

Prevention of Plaque Formation: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3005078/

Improved Hippocampus Oxygenation: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37471213/

Excellent Source of Epicatechin: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4477097/

Writer / Researcher: Trey Norbey