Do Your Heart a ‘Flav’or

They lurk in garbanzo beans, soybeans and peanuts – three foods things you need to be eating if you’ve recently suffered from a stroke. What are they? They’re isoflavones.

Isoflavones are chemicals found in vegetable-based products (like legumes) and are known for their antioxidant powers in ridding the body of harmful free radicals. Free radicals are other chemicals in the body, but these chemicals eat away at the body’s cellular  structures and contribute to diseases like heart disease and various forms of cancer. In fact, heart disease is a direct result of free radicals and the damage they unleash.

Isoflavones do their best to take care of that. They’re particularly proficient at treating people who’ve recently suffered from a stroke.

Strokes arise because of an inadequate amount of blood flow going from the heart to the brain. If one is lucky enough to survive a stroke, treatment can be a long process as the body must essentially re-learn how to supply blood flow throughout the body – the brain, particularly – effectively. One way in which to improve blood flow, according to researchers, is through the consumption of isoflavones.

Researchers from the University of Hong Kong discovered this after supplying 50 people who’d suffered from a stroke with 80 mg of isoflavone that was to be taken as a supplement. Fifty two other participants received a placebo. After 12 weeks of supplementation, the researchers found what amounted to a 50 percent increase in blood flow among the isoflavone group compared to the patients taking a placebo. The researchers’ determined the amount of blood flow based on a phenomenon called flow-mediated dilation, which essentially measures just how much blood is flowing through a certain artery. For this study, the researchers measured the flow mediated dilation of the participants’ brachial artery – the artery that runs from the base of the elbow, along the lower bicep, and into the shoulder (you can actually feel your pulse if you press your fingers against it). Almost 80 percent of the participants suffered from impaired flow mediated dilation (i.e. the blood flow was not where it needed to be to be considered healthy). But after 12 weeks of supplementation, the prevalence of impaired flow mediated dilation among the participants dropped from 80 percent down to less than 60 percent.

“Our study implied that diets with higher isoflavone contents might be beneficial in reducing cardiovascular risk in ischaemic stroke patients,” said Professor Hung-Fat Tse, one of the lead researchers and authors of the study that’s published in the European Heart Journal.

You’ll notice the words “implied” and “might.” Generally speaking, scientists are reticent to say anything is definitive, particularly when they don’t know why something has an impact on something else. That standard applies here as well, as the researchers don’t know what exactly explains the isoflavones impact on improved blood flow. Nevertheless, they do seem confident that isoflavone supplementation could be used as an addendum to the treatments that are already used for stroke victims, as the effects were comparable to the effects that come from endurance training.