The Underrated Chocolate Beverage That Can Lower Blood Pressure And Boost Your Brain Health

Who doesn't love chocolate? Chocolate adds so much to your favorite desserts, but you can also enjoy chocolate in your drinks. Think hot chocolate, chocolate milk, and even chocolate martinis. While many chocolate drinks have just a hint of antioxidant-rich cacao, one doctor in the United Kingdom featured a unique chocolate drink on the popular U.K. morning show "This Morning" (via SurreyLive).

In a subsequent post on Instagram, Dr. Amir Khan said that blending raw cacao powder (here's one option of organic raw cacao powder on Amazon) with almond milk, honey, and espresso can boost blood flow to your brain. Just be sure it's cacao powder, not the cocoa powder that you'll typically see on baking shelves. 

Health Digest asked registered dietitian Kara Lydon about raw cacao's health benefits. "Cocoa flavanols (antioxidants found in raw cacao) have been shown to improve cerebral blood flow, which may help improve memory, cognition, and processing speed," she said. "Flavanols have been shown to increase nitric oxide production which help widen blood vessels, improve blood flow, and thus lower blood pressure."

As you age, your immune system weakens and becomes less efficient in fighting oxidative stress. Oxidative stress can build up and damage your cells, leading to memory loss and cognitive decline. That's where the antioxidants found in cacao come in. Cacao has antioxidants such as catechins and epicatechins that help neutralize free radicals and protect your brain against inflammation. In a 2021 study in Scientific Reports, rats fed with cacao showed fewer markers of oxidative stress in the brain and liver. The cacao also boosted protective enzymes and proteins in the brain while reducing brain damage linked to memory and learning.

(Read about what can happen if you eat too much chocolate.)

Cocoa can reduce blood pressure in other ways besides boosting nitric oxide production. The flavanols in cocoa can reduce angiotensin-converting enzyme (ACE) activity to lower blood pressure. Many people with hypertension will take ACE inhibitor medications to control their blood pressure. According to a 2017 review in the Cochrane Database Systematic Reviews, flavanol-rich cocoa products reduced systolic blood pressure by 4 mmHg in people with high blood pressure. However, cocoa tends to be less effective in people whose blood pressure is normal.

To boost brain health and lower blood pressure, you don't just want to grab a packet of hot cocoa. There's a difference between chocolate and raw cacao. A raw cacao bean is fermented like a coffee bean and retains most of its powerful nutrients because it hasn't been heated. Raw cacao powder is light, but it has a very bitter taste. It also has cocoa butter, which means it is high in fat.

Cocoa powder, on the other hand, has been heat-processed, which removes some of the fat but also some of its polyphenols. However, lower roasting temperatures and shorter roasting times of cocoa can increase the polyphenols, particularly the catechins. Cocoa powder is much darker than raw cacao powder. Dutch-processed cocoa (alkali processing) goes one step further in processing by treating the cocoa with a bicarbonate to increase its pH. Dutch-processed cocoa loses many of the antioxidants, particularly the catechins and epicatechins, according to a 2022 review in the International Journal of Molecular Sciences.

If Khan's cocoa-coffee concoction is unpalatable, you can still reach for your favorite dark chocolate bar. To get the most antioxidants from chocolate, look for at least 70% cocoa, and make sure cocoa is the first ingredient. Your chocolate bar should also be free from unfamiliar ingredients that you can't pronounce, and you should avoid chocolate that's Dutch-processed (here are some of the best forms of chocolate and some to avoid).