NEW YORK: A professor of medicine has urged medical science to consider epicatechin, a compound found in cocoa, as a vitamin. He believes the compound can help reduce the risk of 4 most common killer diseases: stroke, cancer, heart disease and diabetes.
Professor Norman Hollenborg of the Harvard Medical School said he had been observing the Kuna people of Panama for the last 15 years and found the incidence of these four diseases reduced to less than 10 percent. The health benefit was likely gained from the Kuna people's regular consumption of cocoa – the natives here can drink as many as 40 cups of cocoa a week. The bitter tasting fruit is rich in epicatechin, which, the professor believes, can rival penicillin and anesthesia.
His findings may be “the most important observations in the history of medicine” if they are later proven through clinical research. It should be considered important, especially because of epicatechin's potential to “get rid of 4 of the 5 most common diseases in the western world” Hollenberg said.
We asked some pharmacology experts and nutritionists for their views on the findings published in the latest issue of the Chemistry & Industry. Most agreed that while epicatechin cannot be classified as a vitamin, the benefits which Hollenberg spoke about may persuade the industry to review its definition of the term 'vitamin'. Common definition of a vitamin is an essential substance in the metabolism, the lack or deficiency of which gives rise to disease or disorder.
This definition itself points to “a possible link between the high incidence of the 5 killer diseases and epicatechin deficiency in the US population”, a nutritionist said.
Hollenberg said other populations could also gain the same health benefit from the cocoa chemical as the Kuna people. He said he'd been observing hundreds of elderly people from various cultures including the Kuna people. His interest was sparked off when he noticed there were no incidences of high blood pressure among the Kuna natives who grow up consuming a drink made from cocoa.
He believed the health benefit was from some protective gene but later discovered it was environmental. Kuna people who moved to the mainland and adopted the western lifestyle, eventually developed all the age-related diseases such as hypertension.
Besides cocoa-based chocolate, epicatechin - a type of flavonoid is found also in some fruits, vegetables, tea and wine. A medical researcher said the flavonoid could be raising nitric oxide levels in the blood which is known to improve blood flow which might explain the absence of hypertension in the Kuna natives.
