Bar Of Chocolate Brings Man Back To Life (anemia Symptom Reversal?)

Joined
Apr 22, 2019
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Hey guys,
In my head this is a 1+1=2 anecdote, but it requires a few sentences of context.

Summarized conclusion: about 450 calories of 100% dark chocolate reversed symptoms of fatigue and lack of motivation.

___________
For the last few weeks, something like 80% of my calories have come from store-bought, pasteurized whole milk. The rest is amounted to lean meats, fruit or fruit juice, a few combined servings of liver or oysters, bone broth, and a handful of meals with a rice or bread added (didn't keep either of these for more than a few days because of obvious digestive upset).

Also I have been drinking quite a bit (compared to average citizens but maybe not the RPF member lol) of coffee almost every day. 60 ounces some days, 20 ounces others. Averaging about 40 ounces/day.

Digestion, mental clarity, workout potential have been great when relying on milk most of the day with occasional fruit juice and 1/2-3/4lb lean meat at one serving.

HOWEVER, in the last 5 days, I started to run into a fatigue wall. Waking up feeling like I hadn't slept, motivation in the dumpster, etc. A few hours after a meat meal I'd get some energy back and quickly spend it on the gym/intellectual work... But despite staying full and definitely getting enough calories, I lost a lot of momentum.

At first I thought it was overtraining... But rest and calorie surpluses just progressively got to a point where it wasn't cutting it.

THEN I started to (I'd say 50% of the time, not every single time but...) get cold hands & feet 20 minutes after drinking an appreciable amount of milk by itself or even with fruit or fruit juice at the same time. Occasionally it would even give me symptoms of insulin spiking with a suddenly huge urge to take a nap.

Essentially I chalked my feelings and perceived responses to anemia. No blood tests or anything, it just lined up perfectly in accordance with how things have been. I figure the severe lack of motivation indicated a lack of dopamine as well.

It's like... Milk and coffee prevent iron absorption and that's most of my diet... I'm having red meat once every four days or so (I wouldn't mind eating it every day it's just that every time I've tried to make a daily portion it flares my psoriasis) and I'm also not having large amounts of vitamin C every day either.

I'm fully aware of the bound/unbound iron issue, that most people have way too much as it is, and that iron itself is a likely driver of inflamm-aging, but based on the few basic points I just mentioned in combination with other points I won't belabor here - spleen pain, skin diseases as blood/circulation problems, an intense metal detox protocol experience using binders + sauna use, much intestinal shedding from dysbiosis rehabilitation, and a "qi deficient" tongue diagnosis - I was pretty confident that an iron source besides red meat would have a marked effect.

The apparent dopamine problem made me believe that the chocolate would also help in that regard and...

Yeah. After feeling really lethargic for the past week, a bar of unsweetened baking chocolate brought me back to life in 5 minutes. Feeling 5 times better than I have in the last 7 days.

I've had separate, similar experiences of revitalization in the past with water, salt, fruit, carrot or celery juice, shilajit, and whole-food vitamin C.

This time I think it was iron and magnesium that had been run down, but it's all speculation.

For the record, when I had severe gut dysbiosis, chocolate caused inflammatory symptoms. Now it's fine, but I'm not going to abuse it.
 

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A.R

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Ok so what does 100% chocolate exactly contain? Like the ingredients
 
OP
Twohandsondeck
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Chocolate is so interesting. It do be like that. Mayan kings (or singular, specific king) purportedly drank 50 cups of "hot chocolate" a day.

Yeah! I've read that before somewhere too. Nutty.
--err, seedy is more like it.


Ok so what does 100% chocolate exactly contain? Like the ingredients

I bought two, labels attached. One is from Kraft and the other is from Ghirardelli. They both have nothing but "unsweetened chocolate" as the label between the front and back sides.

I assume it's just strictly a "fully fermented seed of Theobroma cacao" that has been packaged in a bar state as chocolate is. There's no sugar or milk additions, so it's mildly bitter.

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&sou...FjABegQICxAF&usg=AOvVaw2IA8-t5RBQKieHkfk51Hgb
 

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J

james2388

Guest
average 40 ounces of coffee? How much caffeine is that exactly?
You're also getting 80% of your calories from whole milk?
So are you just living on Cold Coffee + Sugar?
Chances are you need more protein, cold hands and feet, is a sign of not only anemia, but an albumin problem. Blood has no problem getting to where it needs to go, when you have adequate protein balance and blood plasma is towards the higher end, not the lower.
Also dark chocolate has vasodilating properties. It's not the magnesium, whatever is left is probably processed out. And as for the Iron, you should be getting it from liver and meat, which you probably need to eat at least 3/4lb... a day..
If you go this route, of eating the richest dark chocolate, you can start giving yourself some bad problems.

Remember dogs literally start fighting for their life when they eat chocolate. Humans on the other hand, some have more tolerances than others, but its no surprise we can get those same side effects, theobromine can produce muscle tremors, seizures, an irregular heartbeat, internal bleeding or a heart attack, not to mention urinary, and bowel problems associated with poisoning.

Never in my life, will I eat dark chocolate again.

****it's obviously the vasodilation properties of theobromine and chocolate compounds. This obviously is a toxic acute effect, to make blood pressure drop upon excessive digestion, which explains all the autonomic symptoms of poisoning. If you think you have anemia go get the full iron panel.
 

YourUniverse

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average 40 ounces of coffee? How much caffeine is that exactly?
You're also getting 80% of your calories from whole milk?
So are you just living on Cold Coffee + Sugar?
Chances are you need more protein, cold hands and feet, is a sign of not only anemia, but an albumin problem. Blood has no problem getting to where it needs to go, when you have adequate protein balance and blood plasma is towards the higher end, not the lower.
Also dark chocolate has vasodilating properties. It's not the magnesium, whatever is left is probably processed out. And as for the Iron, you should be getting it from liver and meat, which you probably need to eat at least 3/4lb... a day..
If you go this route, of eating the richest dark chocolate, you can start giving yourself some bad problems.

Remember dogs literally start fighting for their life when they eat chocolate. Humans on the other hand, some have more tolerances than others, but its no surprise we can get those same side effects, theobromine can produce muscle tremors, seizures, an irregular heartbeat, internal bleeding or a heart attack, not to mention urinary, and bowel problems associated with poisoning.

Never in my life, will I eat dark chocolate again.

****it's obviously the vasodilation properties of theobromine and chocolate compounds. This obviously is a toxic acute effect, to make blood pressure drop upon excessive digestion, which explains all the autonomic symptoms of poisoning. If you think you have anemia go get the full iron panel.
Meh, thats pretty alarming. I doubt its that serious. Cold hands can be adrenaline too, maybe his diet raised his metabolism to the point that he needs even more calories than hes used to, and the bar of chocolate alleviates that deficit. His adrenaline dropped to baseline and the magic of chocolate compounded the euphoria. Too much of anything is probably bad though
 

A.R

Member
Joined
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Messages
893
Yeah! I've read that before somewhere too. Nutty.
--err, seedy is more like it.




I bought two, labels attached. One is from Kraft and the other is from Ghirardelli. They both have nothing but "unsweetened chocolate" as the label between the front and back sides.

I assume it's just strictly a "fully fermented seed of Theobroma cacao" that has been packaged in a bar state as chocolate is. There's no sugar or milk additions, so it's mildly bitter.

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cocoa_bean#:~:text=The%20cocoa%20bean%20or%20simply,the%20fat)%20can%20be%20extracted.&ved=2ahUKEwj73obviODrAhWltlkKHSNTB94QFjABegQICxAF&usg=AOvVaw2IA8-t5RBQKieHkfk51Hgb
So I presume the chocolate solidifies with just the natural cocoa fat
 
OP
Twohandsondeck
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Messages
799
Chances are you need more protein, cold hands and feet, is a sign of not only anemia, but an albumin problem.

Needing more protein is highly plausible. I'm definitely on the low end each day, especially considering the added stress of daily weight training. Milk is a wonderful tonic, quite satiating, and seems to fill most of my recovery needs... But as the days go on I find myself feeling like the milk protein is somehow incomplete. I feel much better in general whenever I supplement the milk protein with even small amounts of flesh or bone broth protein.

Cold hands can be adrenaline too, maybe his diet raised his metabolism to the point that he needs even more calories than hes used to, and the bar of chocolate alleviates that deficit.

The adrenaline response is something I think about often, especially if I experience any symptoms of vasoconstriction or a 'tired & wired' mentality. To your point, if my calorie stream lapses (i.e. I go for 5 hours without eating), symptoms of adrenaline become increasingly prominent within a couple of hours. Oddly enough in the past 2 months the only time that it felt comfortable to slip into a fasted state was the day after I binged on 12 ounces of cooked pasta. It made me feel miserable and bloated and everything looked unappealing except for a bit of fruit juice and water for the next 24 hours. It was strange because I didn't feel the usual wall of low blood sugar that prefaces a fasted state. A couple days later after resuming no-starch, that preemptive blood sugar drop became very apparent once again.

So I presume the chocolate solidifies with just the natural cocoa fat

I think that the chocolate is the natural cocoa fat, lol
 
J

james2388

Guest
Meh, thats pretty alarming. I doubt its that serious. Cold hands can be adrenaline too, maybe his diet raised his metabolism to the point that he needs even more calories than hes used to, and the bar of chocolate alleviates that deficit. His adrenaline dropped to baseline and the magic of chocolate compounded the euphoria. Too much of anything is probably bad though

At an average of 40 ounces of coffee... There is no distinguishable difference between caffeine and adrenaline, which seem to be the preliminary cause of the poor blood flow. I doubt a normal 450 calories makes one go from cold to warm, it's the vasodilating properties of the dark chocolate. People with sufficient protein intakes, have no problem maintaining a sufficient blood temp, ie albumin & thermogenesis.

I don't believe in magic, or the ambiguity of too much of anything is probably bad.
 
OP
Twohandsondeck
Joined
Apr 22, 2019
Messages
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I doubt a normal 450 calories makes one go from cold to warm, it's the vasodilating properties of the dark chocolate.

To be clear, I hadn't suffered from any such symptoms of adrenaline spiking for several hours before having chocolate on an empty stomach. To my own perception, I was merely fatigued and unmotivated... Which I believe can absolutely be a result of adrenal fatigue, sure... but alas I've had no difficulty relaxing, sleeping, or keeping my mind straight that I would normally use to mark a state of adrenaline dominance despite my recent coffee habits. Those wired symptoms of adrenaline dominance only occur if I skip breakfast and drink coffee.

The chocolate certainly provided something else that was lacking besides general calories, saturated fat, or a back-ended way of sequestering an adrenaline state, and that's why I posted this.
 
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I use Cacoa nibs 28-30 grams and grind with a pestle and mortar, or just chew the nibs
cacao-nibs-nutrition-600x600.jpg
 

reality

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Chocolate has some strong bioactive compounds in

Caffeine
Theobromine
Phenylethylamine
Anandamide
...
 
Joined
Dec 18, 2018
Messages
2,206
Hey guys,
In my head this is a 1+1=2 anecdote, but it requires a few sentences of context.

Summarized conclusion: about 450 calories of 100% dark chocolate reversed symptoms of fatigue and lack of motivation.

___________
For the last few weeks, something like 80% of my calories have come from store-bought, pasteurized whole milk. The rest is amounted to lean meats, fruit or fruit juice, a few combined servings of liver or oysters, bone broth, and a handful of meals with a rice or bread added (didn't keep either of these for more than a few days because of obvious digestive upset).

Also I have been drinking quite a bit (compared to average citizens but maybe not the RPF member lol) of coffee almost every day. 60 ounces some days, 20 ounces others. Averaging about 40 ounces/day.

Digestion, mental clarity, workout potential have been great when relying on milk most of the day with occasional fruit juice and 1/2-3/4lb lean meat at one serving.

HOWEVER, in the last 5 days, I started to run into a fatigue wall. Waking up feeling like I hadn't slept, motivation in the dumpster, etc. A few hours after a meat meal I'd get some energy back and quickly spend it on the gym/intellectual work... But despite staying full and definitely getting enough calories, I lost a lot of momentum.

At first I thought it was overtraining... But rest and calorie surpluses just progressively got to a point where it wasn't cutting it.

THEN I started to (I'd say 50% of the time, not every single time but...) get cold hands & feet 20 minutes after drinking an appreciable amount of milk by itself or even with fruit or fruit juice at the same time. Occasionally it would even give me symptoms of insulin spiking with a suddenly huge urge to take a nap.

Essentially I chalked my feelings and perceived responses to anemia. No blood tests or anything, it just lined up perfectly in accordance with how things have been. I figure the severe lack of motivation indicated a lack of dopamine as well.

It's like... Milk and coffee prevent iron absorption and that's most of my diet... I'm having red meat once every four days or so (I wouldn't mind eating it every day it's just that every time I've tried to make a daily portion it flares my psoriasis) and I'm also not having large amounts of vitamin C every day either.

I'm fully aware of the bound/unbound iron issue, that most people have way too much as it is, and that iron itself is a likely driver of inflamm-aging, but based on the few basic points I just mentioned in combination with other points I won't belabor here - spleen pain, skin diseases as blood/circulation problems, an intense metal detox protocol experience using binders + sauna use, much intestinal shedding from dysbiosis rehabilitation, and a "qi deficient" tongue diagnosis - I was pretty confident that an iron source besides red meat would have a marked effect.

The apparent dopamine problem made me believe that the chocolate would also help in that regard and...

Yeah. After feeling really lethargic for the past week, a bar of unsweetened baking chocolate brought me back to life in 5 minutes. Feeling 5 times better than I have in the last 7 days.

I've had separate, similar experiences of revitalization in the past with water, salt, fruit, carrot or celery juice, shilajit, and whole-food vitamin C.

This time I think it was iron and magnesium that had been run down, but it's all speculation.

For the record, when I had severe gut dysbiosis, chocolate caused inflammatory symptoms. Now it's fine, but I'm not going to abuse it.

False positive / some other unaccounted factors? 5 minutes after eating chocolate resolved anemia? Does not sound probable to me.
 

SaltGirl

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Chocolate also has copper which a lot of people are having problems with getting enough, either due to the milk, zinc or high iron.
 
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If you can stomach the taste how about Cacoa nibs, an ounce (28 grams) will give you 64 milligrams of Mg plus saturated fat, fiber, manganese, copper, iron, phosphorus, zinc and selenium :D
What's not to love!!![/QUOTE
 

YourUniverse

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I don't believe in magic, or the ambiguity of too much of anything is probably bad.
Your ancestors called it magic, but you call it science. I come from a land where they are one of the same.
Or maybe my ancestors call it magic and yours science, idk. My brethren Thor said that. Mr. @reality listed some magical compounds.
Do you have a cite for that?
Sure, lets see what I can do.
https://bfy.tw/P20v
:)
What We Know About the Earliest History of Chocolate | History | Smithsonian Magazine
How We Got Our Hands on the Recipe for Lord Chocolate's Cocoa Drink
The Maya civilization used chocolate as money
 
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