Hot Chocolate and Stem Cells? Here's the Scoop!

Cup of Hot Chocolate

Imagine your body is like a city and your blood vessels are the roads that keep everything moving.

Now, think of stem cells as special repair trucks that help fix any damage in the city, like potholes or broken streetlights.

Scientists at a big university found that drinking a special kind of hot chocolate - not just any hot chocolate, but one that's really rich in a healthy ingredient called flavanols - can send more of these repair trucks into your blood roads.

When people drank this special hot chocolate twice a day for a month, they had twice as many repair trucks (stem cells) ready to fix any damage, compared to people who didn't drink it.

This is amazing because it means this special hot chocolate can help keep the roads in our body smooth and in good shape, making it easier for everything to move around and keeping the city working well.

It's like giving your body's repair team a super boost to keep everything running smoothly!

So, what was special about this stem-cell doubling hot chocolate?

  • High cacao content: The hot chocolate used in the study was made with dark chocolate that had a cacao content of 70 percent or higher.
  • Flavanols: These are the powerful plant compounds in cacao that doubled the stem cells.
  • Avoid sugary cocoa: Processed hot chocolate with lots of sugar and little real cacao won’t have the same effect.

Lesson here?

Some foods and drinks, like this special hot chocolate made with real cacao, aren't just yummy - they can actually help our bodies in amazing ways, like doubling the number of stem cells (those handy repair trucks) that keep us healthy.

Note: Both cacao and cocoa come from the same place - the cacao bean - but how they're processed makes all the difference when it comes to health benefits.

P.S. Wondering what kind of chocolate works best?

I'll let you know what I use if you send me a message. Not all chocolate is created equal and the right one can make a big difference in your results.

This study was conducted by researchers at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF).