George Ferman@Helios_Movement
This will sound very schizophrenic, but making your own chocolate out of quality cacao and replacing sugar with glycine might be fine if you have type 2 diabetes and want something sweet.
Glycine tastes like sugar and it has been shown to lower A1C and pro-inflammatory markers to a decent extent in Type 2 diabetics.
Cacao polyphenols have also shown a lot of benefits.
*Glycine is also important for skin health, sleep, detoxing, counteracting some of the downsides of methionine etc etc
**Cacao is also shown to:
-Increase flow-mediated dilation (great for pre workout).
-Lower blood pressure a bit
-Assist platelet aggregation
-Lower oxidized LDL
-Improve skin elasticity
-Feed Bifidobacterium and Lactobacillus
and has plenty of other benefits through:
-Epicatechin
-Catechin
- Theobromine
-b-Phenylethylamine
- Anandamide
Epicatechin for example inhibits COX-2 and in one study 40g dark chocolate reduced menstrual pain as effectively as 400 mg ibuprofen.
It also crosses the blood-brain barrier, upregulates BDNF and stimulates hippocampal neurogenesis.
Then, methylxanthines such as theobromine provide gentle stimulatory effects and can also cause some bronchodilation.
Then, b-Phenylethylamine spikes during infatuation and cacao provides 1–2 mg per 40g (it basically makes you feel good).
Of course, we can't forget about the effects on the endocannabinoid system through anandamide but also inhibitors such as N-oleoylethanolamine and N-linoleoylethanolamine.