What’s your favorite way to have cacao? Dr. William Li joined me on The Doctor’s Farmacy recently to explain how we can leverage food to optimize every system of the body. Here, he explains the many benefits of incorporating cacao into your diet. Find the full conversation on your favorite podcast app.

So, studies have been done to show that the flavonols in cocoa stimulate stem cells to come out of your bone marrow like bees in a bee hive in your bloodstream and they go out and they find wherever needs to be repaired, if it's in your heart they'll fix it, if it's in your liver they'll fix it, if it's in your skin they'll fix it and so we can eat foods like high flavonol cocoa in order to be able to actually get the stem cells to work a little bit better. Now, how do we know this actually function works in people? Well, clinical studies have been done with high flavonol cocoa to show that in like, men who are in their 60s with heart disease, they could actually eat just have two cups of dark chocolate hot cocoa a day for a month and they doubled the amount of stem cells in your bloodstream and their circulation improved measurably. And then what's even more important and impressive is that there was a study called the Cosmos study that was completed in recently that showed that eating high flavonol cocoa decreases the risk of cardiovascular death, right, over a period of getting it. Like a set. Exactly. Except made by eating the same thing that you used to make chocolate, so we're not telling people to go out to have chocolate, which is a confection, there's a lot of sugar and all kinds of other stuff in it, but it's the stuff underlying it, the core of it.