The Checkup Scandal: Two Places Your Checkup Never Looks
Your checkup looks at two numbers and skips the two places your circulation runs on. Today you see the formula we built around both: SuperCocoa™ Blood Flow Capsules.
The Scandal
In a UCLA study of 136,905 hospitalizations for heart disease, almost half the patients had an LDL under 100, the level their guidelines called optimal. (The full story is here.)
“My Dad didn’t make it to 65. My brother had a heart attack almost immediately after a check up that told him he was good to go.” Dianna, in the comments on that story.
Your checkup measures your blood pressure and your cholesterol. It never looks at the two things your circulation runs on.
Your doctor isn’t the problem. The toolkit your doctor was handed is.
Introducing SuperCocoa™ Blood Flow Capsules
Built for the two things no checkup measures:
One: your blood has to flow freely. Nattokinase, 10,800 FU a serving. It supports your body’s natural ability to break down fibrin, the sticky protein that can interfere with blood flow after 50. Most bottles give you 2,000.
Two: your arteries have to open wide. Cocoa flavanols & flavonoids, 1,200 mg a serving. They help your arteries make nitric oxide, the signal that tells them to relax.
Two capsules with your morning coffee. Nothing to mix. Nothing to taste.
That formula didn’t exist in a single US bottle. Until today.
Early access: The early access list sees it Thursday, November 12, a day before everyone else. 👉 PUT MY NAME DOWN.
The Science Is There. The Checkup Isn’t.
Arteries that open wide. Your arteries are lined with a layer one cell thick that tells them when to open. Dr. Robert Furchgott found that signal in 1980 and shared the Nobel Prize for it in 1998. It fades as the years go by. On islands off Panama, Kuna people over 60 had blood pressure as low as Kuna in their twenties, and they drank about ten times more cocoa than their relatives in the city.
Blood that flows freely. Every day your blood forms tiny clots. That’s how you stop bleeding. When the job is done, your body breaks them down. It happens every day of your life.
The checkup. Researchers can measure both. A standard checkup measures neither. That’s the gap SuperCocoa™ Blood Flow Capsules was built for.
Why the Shelf Stayed Split in Two
Nobody can patent a bean. Nobody can patent an enzyme from a thousand-year-old breakfast. So nobody had a reason to put the two on one label.
On October 27 we priced 39 market products: 14 high-flavanol cocoas, 11 nattokinase supplements, 9 other circulation products, and 5 that combine two things.
- The cocoas that print a number print flavanols. None carries nattokinase.
- The nattokinase products print FU. None carries a flavanol amount.
- One brand pairs cacao with 5,000 FU of nattokinase, as two separate products.
- One carries 10,800 FU of nattokinase with cocoa as a flavor, and prints no flavanol amount.
- One names cacao, flavanols and nattokinase in its title, and prints no amounts at all.
Not one of the 39 printed a flavanol amount and a nattokinase amount on the same label. Cocoa got one aisle, and nattokinase got another.
SuperCocoa™ Blood Flow Capsules puts both in one formula: 10,800 FU and 1,200 mg in every serving, printed on the label.
Cocoa Flavanols and Flavonoids, 1,200 mg: For Arteries That Open Wide
Flavanols are the compounds that put cocoa on the map in circulation research. The story starts on a string of islands off Panama.
The island where blood pressure didn’t rise
The Kuna people of the San Blas islands were among the first communities ever described whose blood pressure barely climbed as they aged. When Dr. Norman Hollenberg’s team enrolled 316 Kuna in the 1990s, the islanders over 60 had blood pressure as low as the ones in their twenties.
Kuna who had moved to Panama City didn’t: theirs rose with age, like everyone else’s.
It wasn’t salt. The island Kuna ate plenty of it. The difference was in their cup: they drank about ten times (10x) as many cocoa drinks as their relatives in the city, more than 900 mg of flavanols a day by the researchers’ estimate.
What they do
Flavanols help your arteries make nitric oxide, the signal Furchgott found, the one that tells them to relax. Hollenberg’s team showed the link in Boston. They gave 27 healthy people flavanol-rich cocoa, 821 mg of flavanols a day, for five days, and the small arteries in their fingers opened, a response the paper called “consistent and striking.” Then they blocked the body’s nitric oxide with a drug, and the effect disappeared. The flavanols were working through nitric oxide.
What the research shows
In 2017, cardiologists at the University of Düsseldorf ran four randomized, double-masked studies on 47 healthy volunteers. Two hours after a single cocoa flavanol drink, up to 820 mg of flavanols, their arteries widened more easily and were less stiff. The effect grew when the drink also carried cocoa’s own theobromine and caffeine, which helped more of the flavanol epicatechin reach the blood.
Researchers call that widening flow-mediated dilation: a cuff squeezes the arm, lets go, and an ultrasound measures how much the artery opens as the blood rushes back in. It’s the number that slips as the years go by.
Why 1,200 mg
Most cocoa never tells you its flavanols, and processing is why. Alkali processing, the step that darkens most store cocoa, strips them out: a 2008 study of commercial cocoas found that the heavier the processing, the less flavanol was left.
SuperCocoa™ Blood Flow Capsules prints both amounts on the label:
- 600 mg of cocoa flavanols plus 600 mg of high-purity flavonoids,
- 1,200 mg in every serving.
The 600 mg of flavanols sits right in the range researchers have studied: COSMOS, the biggest cocoa flavanol trial to date, gave 21,442 adults 500 mg a day.
Nattokinase, 10,800 FU: For Blood That Flows Freely
Flavanols are the compounds that put cocoa on the map in circulation research. The story starts on a string of islands off Panama.
The island where blood pressure didn’t rise
The Kuna people of the San Blas islands were among the first communities ever described whose blood pressure barely climbed as they aged. When Dr. Norman Hollenberg’s team enrolled 316 Kuna in the 1990s, the islanders over 60 had blood pressure as low as the ones in their twenties.
Kuna who had moved to Panama City didn’t: theirs rose with age, like everyone else’s.
It wasn’t salt. The island Kuna ate plenty of it. The difference was in their cup: they drank about ten times (10x) as many cocoa drinks as their relatives in the city, more than 900 mg of flavanols a day by the researchers’ estimate.
What they do
Flavanols help your arteries make nitric oxide, the signal Furchgott found, the one that tells them to relax. Hollenberg’s team showed the link in Boston. They gave 27 healthy people flavanol-rich cocoa, 821 mg of flavanols a day, for five days, and the small arteries in their fingers opened, a response the paper called “consistent and striking.” Then they blocked the body’s nitric oxide with a drug, and the effect disappeared. The flavanols were working through nitric oxide.
In 2017, cardiologists at the University of Düsseldorf ran four randomized, double-masked studies on 47 healthy volunteers. Two hours after a single cocoa flavanol drink, up to 820 mg of flavanols, their arteries widened more easily and were less stiff. The effect grew when the drink also carried cocoa’s own theobromine and caffeine, which helped more of the flavanol epicatechin reach the blood.
Researchers call that widening flow-mediated dilation: a cuff squeezes the arm, lets go, and an ultrasound measures how much the artery opens as the blood rushes back in. It’s the number that slips as the years go by.
Why 1,200 mg
Most cocoa never tells you its flavanols, and processing is why. Alkali processing, the step that darkens most store cocoa, strips them out: a 2008 study of commercial cocoas found that the heavier the processing, the less flavanol was left.
SuperCocoa™ Blood Flow Capsules prints both amounts on the label:
- 600 mg of cocoa flavanols plus 600 mg of high-purity flavonoids,
- 1,200 mg in every serving.
The 600 mg of flavanols sits right in the range researchers have studied: COSMOS, the biggest cocoa flavanol trial to date, gave 21,442 adults 500 mg a day.
Japan’s death rate from cardiovascular disease runs at about half (50%) of ours. Nobody can prove one food explains that number. And every morning in Japan, millions of people eat a bowl of natto: soybeans fermented until they turn sticky and strong-smelling, served over rice. Families have eaten it for about a thousand years.
Chicago, 1980
In a borrowed lab at the University of Chicago, a young Japanese researcher named Hiroyuki Sumi was screening foods for something drug companies had spent decades chasing: the ability to break fibrin apart. Most of what he tested did nothing. Then he placed a sample of natto on a dish of human fibrin and went home for the night. Eighteen hours later, the fibrin around it was gone.
He named the enzyme nattokinase and published it in 1987. In the lab it worked on the same target as plasmin, the enzyme your own body uses to take fibrin apart.
What it does
Every clot your body makes is built in two steps. Platelets clump into a plug, then fibrin, a sticky protein thread, weaves a net over it and holds it in place. When the job is done, your body takes the net apart, like fraying a fishing net into rope, then into thread, then into nothing. It’s a job your body does every day of your life.
Nattokinase supports your body’s natural ability to do exactly that.
What the research shows
It works taken by mouth. In 1990, Sumi’s team showed that oral nattokinase raised the fibrin-breaking activity in the blood, along with t-PA, the body’s own signal to start taking fibrin apart.
In 2015, researchers at Ritsumeikan University in Japan gave 12 healthy young men a single 2,000 FU dose. Within hours, the markers of fibrin breakdown in their blood rose, every value inside the normal range.
In a 2009 study in Taiwan, 45 people took 4,000 FU a day for two months. Their fibrinogen, the raw material fibrin is spun from, came down 9% in the healthy group, with no notable adverse events.
Why 10,800 FU
Most Americans will never eat natto. The smell ends the conversation before the science starts, and a bowl of natto doesn’t come with a number on it. Most nattokinase on the shelf stops at 2,000 FU a capsule, the bare minimum to print the word on a label. SuperCocoa™ Blood Flow Capsules carries 10,800 FU in every serving, more than five times the typical drugstore dose.
And 10,800 FU sits at the high end of the dosing researchers have used. The largest nattokinase study to date followed 1,062 people taking exactly 10,800 FU a day for twelve months, and its authors called that dose “safe and well tolerated.”
Who Should Talk to a Doctor First
Nattokinase isn’t for everyone.
Do not use if you take anticoagulant (blood-thinning) or antiplatelet medication, including daily aspirin, or take NSAID pain relievers regularly; if you have a bleeding disorder; if you are pregnant or nursing; or within two weeks before or after surgery or dental work, unless your doctor advises it. Stop use and talk to your doctor if you notice unusual bruising or bleeding.
Cocoa naturally contains caffeine and theobromine. If you’re sensitive to caffeine, keep that in mind.
And never start, stop or change a prescribed medication without your doctor.
Why We Built It
Nobody in the system gets paid when your body does the work on its own. So we built it.
Your arteries have been opening on that signal your whole life. Your blood has been forming and breaking down tiny clots your whole life too. SuperCocoa™ Blood Flow Capsules is built to support both, every single day, in two capsules with your morning coffee.
Most people will never hear about these two places. You just did.
Frequently Asked Questions
What’s in a serving?
Nobody in the system gets paid when your body does the work on its own. So we built it.
Your arteries have been opening on that signal your whole life. Your blood has been forming and breaking down tiny clots your whole life too. SuperCocoa™ Blood Flow Capsules is built to support both, every single day, in two capsules with your morning coffee.
Most people will never hear about these two places. You just did.
What’s in a serving?
Two capsules, with your morning coffee: 10,800 FU of nattokinase, and 1,200 mg of cocoa flavanols and flavonoids. Both amounts are on the label.
What is the second 600 mg?
The label lists two cocoa amounts. 600 mg is cocoa flavanols. The other 600 mg is a separate ingredient, high-purity flavonoids, added on top. They add up to 1,200 mg.
Why not just eat natto and cocoa?
You can. Natto is a good food, and so is real cocoa. But a bowl of natto doesn’t print an FU number, and most store cocoa doesn’t print a flavanol number, so you’d be guessing at both. We put the amounts on the label so you don’t have to guess.
Is 10,800 FU a day safe?
It’s the exact amount used in the largest nattokinase study to date, a full year in 1,062 people. It still isn’t for everyone: if you take anticoagulant or antiplatelet medication, have a bleeding disorder or have surgery coming up, read Who Should Talk to a Doctor First above.
Which test looks at these two places?
For arteries that open wide, flow-mediated dilation: the ultrasound described above. For blood that flows freely, research studies measure blood markers such as D-dimer and fibrin degradation products. Neither is part of a standard checkup; ask your doctor about either one.
Can I take it with my medication?
Not without your doctor’s OK if you take anything that affects bleeding or clotting. Read Who Should Talk to a Doctor First above before you order.
Is my original cocoa going away?
No. SuperCocoa™ Blood Flow Capsules is a new formula. Our original cocoa stays exactly as it is.
Be the First
This is a founding run: 2,000 bottles.
SuperCocoa™ Blood Flow Capsules is a limited edition product, and it opens this week.
Thursday, we’ll reach out. The early access list hears first.
Most people will never hear about these two places. You just did. That’s why we do this: so anyone who wants to know can know, and look after both places every day, with both amounts right on the label.
What are you doing for these two places right now? Tell me in the comments. I read every one.
Talk soon,
Antonio
CEO, Black Forest Supplements
This is a founding run: 2,000 bottles.
SuperCocoa™ Blood Flow Capsules is a limited edition product, and it opens this week.
Thursday, we’ll reach out. The early access list hears first.
Most people will never hear about these two places. You just did. That’s why we do this: so anyone who wants to know can know, and look after both places every day, with both amounts right on the label.
What are you doing for these two places right now? Tell me in the comments. I read every one.
Talk soon,
Antonio
CEO, Black Forest Supplements