Someday, someone will consolidate all the food and supplement preventions in one place. I expect a medical person should do that because we patients are too stupid to understand research.
http://www.medpagetoday.com/Cardiology/Prevention/33010
Dark chocolate may be an inexpensive way to help prevent
cardiovascular events in patients at risk for heart disease, researchers
found.
A modeling study predicts that patients with metabolic syndrome who eat dark chocolate every day could have 85 fewer events per
10,000 population over 10 years, Chris Reid, PhD, of Monash University
in Melbourne, and colleagues reported online in BMJ.
At a
cost of only $42 per year, treatment with dark chocolate falls into an
acceptable category of cost-effectiveness, at an incremental
cost-effectiveness ratio (ICER) of $50,000 per years of life saved.
"Chocolate
benefits from being by and large a pleasant, and hence sustainable,
treatment option," they wrote. "Evidence to date suggests that the
chocolate would need to be dark and of at least 60% to 70% cocoa, or
formulated to be enriched with polyphenols." This is not your regular Hersheys or chocolate kisses.
Several recent
studies have suggested that eating dark chocolate has blood-pressure and
lipid-lowering effects. To assess whether it could be an effective and
cost-effective treatment option in patients potentially at risk for
cardiovascular events, the researchers looked at data from patients in
the Australian Diabetes, Obesity, and Lifestyle study.
They used a
Markov model to assess health effects and associated costs of daily
consumption of plain dark chocolate compared with no chocolate in a
population with metabolic syndrome but without diabetes or
cardiovascular disease.
The investigators also used
risk-prediction algorithms and population life tables to determine the
probability of patients developing or dying from heart disease or other
noncardiovascular causes each year.
Data on the
blood-pressure-lowering effects of dark chocolate were taken from a
meta-analysis of 13 randomized controlled trials, and lipid-lowering
effects from a meta-analysis of eight short-term trials.
Costs
were taken from a review of the costs of cardiovascular complications in
a healthy population, and included the direct costs of myocardial
infarction and stroke.
They calculated the number of deaths
prevented by determining the difference in the number of deaths between
those consuming and not consuming dark chocolate.
The final model
included a total of 2,013 patients with metabolic syndrome, mean age
53.6, mean systolic blood pressure 141.1 mmHg, mean total cholesterol
6.1 mmol/L, mean HbA1c 34.4 mmol/mol, and mean waist circumference 100.4
cm.
Reid and colleagues found that daily consumption of dark
chocolate -- a polyphenol content equivalent to 100 grams of dark
chocolate -- can reduce cardiovascular events by 85 per 10,000
population over 10 years.
Specifically, with 100% compliance,
treatment would prevent 70 non-fatal and 15 fatal cardiovascular events
per 10,000 population over that time. The authors noted that this was a
"best case scenario" analysis.
When compliance was reduced to 90%,
the number of preventable non-fatal and fatal events fell to 60 and 10,
respectively, and at a compliance of 80%, was reduced to 55 and 10,
respectively. Even at these levels, however, daily dark chocolate was
still considered an effective and cost-effective intervention strategy,
they wrote.
At a cost of $42 per person per year, dark chocolate
prevention strategies came to an estimated ICER of $50,000 per years of
life saved -- a figure well within typical cost-effectiveness
thresholds, the researchers said.
That $42 could be spent on
advertising, educational campaigns, or subsidization of dark chocolate
in higher-risk populations, they wrote.
Reid and colleagues noted
that the study was limited by its reliance on the Framingham algorithm,
which may underestimate risk in a high-risk population, and by
assumptions about the risk of death following a cardiovascular event.
The
study was also limited by the assumption that the benefits of dark
chocolate, which have only been observed in short-term trials, extend to
10 years. Still, they concluded that the findings suggest dark
chocolate may be an effective and cost-effective strategy for preventing
heart disease in patients with metabolic syndrome.
But they never say the dosage, you will have to have your doctor buy the paper.
Before you self-medicate talk to your doctor to even see if you have this syndrome
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