It is believed that when a person has diabetes, their body either doesn't produce enough insulin or doesn't process blood sugar properly; at the root of that is the failure of β-cells (beta cells), whose job is to produce the sugar-regulating hormone insulin.
People consume a lot of cocoa and probably don't want it to have a lot of sugar. It's the compound in cocoa you're interested in, said Dr. Jeffery Tessem, a researcher at Brigham Young University.
In the study, Dr Tessens and his co-authors who first fed the cocoa compound to animals on a high-fat diet discovered that by adding it to their high-fat diet, the compound would decrease the level of obesity in the animals and would increase their ability to deal with increased blood glucose levels.
They then dove in and dissected what was happening on the β-cells (beta cells) level and learned that monomeric cocoa catechins enhanced β-cells (beta cells) ability to secrete insulin. It protects the cells, thus increasing their ability to deal with oxidative stress, Dr Tessen said. He added that the compound makes the mitochondria in the β-cells (beta cells) stronger, which produces more ATP ( a cells energy source), which then results in more insulin released.
Co-author, Dr. Andrew Neilson, of Virginia Tech said that these results will help them get closer to using these compounds more effectively in foods or supplements to maintain normal blood glucose control and potentially even delay or prevent the onset of type-2 diabetes.
The researchers concluded that rather than stocking up on the sugar-rich chocolate bars at the checkout line, that the starting point should be looking for ways to take the compound out of cocoa, make more of it and then use it as a potential treatment for current diabetes patients.
Cocoa is a very nice fruit with great health benefits. It is hopeful that the compound found in this fruit would contribute immensely to curtailing the effect of diabetes on the populace.
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