I Tried Avena Cocoa Flavanols for My Circulation for 14 Days. Here's What Happened.

Posted By Linda M.

58 · Retired school office manager · Dayton, Ohio

September 2026 · 5 Min Read

If your hands and feet are always cold, or your legs feel heavy on the stairs, you already know what it's like to try something new and get nothing out of it. That was me for two years.

Cold feet in bed in the middle of summer. White fingers on the steering wheel. Calves that burned halfway up my daughter's stairs. I tried compression socks, fish oil, cayenne capsules and the circulation gummies from the pharmacy. None of them made a difference I could actually feel.

Then my sister-in-law told me about Avena High Flavanol Cocoa and said to put a scoop in my morning coffee. I decided to try it for 14 days and write down what happened every single day. This is what happened.

Day 1

My hands were warm two hours after the first cup

I put one scoop into my morning coffee at about 7:30. It tastes like a rich hot chocolate with no sugar in it. Easy. No pills, nothing to remember.

The label says 1,200 mg of cocoa flavanols per scoop. I didn't know what that meant yet. I just knew my sister-in-law said it works on blood flow, and I'd tried everything else.

'600 mg of epicatechin per scoop… in my coffee, without a second thought.' Day 1 morning, scoop in the mug.

Around 9:30 I was on the phone with my daughter and realized my free hand was warm. Normally it's tucked under my leg to keep it from going numb. It wasn't.

Warm hands, two hours after the first cup. It was small, and I told myself it might be the coffee. But I wrote it down, because it had never happened before.

Day 2

I finally learned why my circulation was bad, and why nothing else had worked

That night I looked up what cocoa flavanols actually do. I found a study from a university in California, and it explained my problem better than anyone had in two years.

Here's the simple version. Your arteries have a thin lining on the inside, and that lining makes something called nitric oxide. Nitric oxide tells your arteries to relax and open up so blood can get through. As you get older, the lining makes less of it, your arteries stay tight, and less blood reaches your hands, feet and legs.

'I went down a rabbit hole on the research… a paper from a university group in California.' Night before day 1.

Cocoa flavanols raise nitric oxide. In the study, people drank high-flavanol cocoa and their arteries opened up within about two hours. That's exactly what I'd felt on day one.

It has to be the right cocoa, though. Regular store cocoa is processed with alkali, which strips out most of the flavanols. Avena's isn't, which is why one scoop has 1,200 mg.

Compression socks squeeze your legs. Cayenne heats you up. Fish oil thins your blood. None of them raise nitric oxide, and that's why none of them worked for me.

Day 3

Warm hands every morning, right on schedule

Day two and day three went the same as day one. About two hours after my coffee, my hands went from white to a normal pink, and they stayed warm through lunch.

Day 3: 'my hands go from paper-white to normal-person pink, and it holds through lunch.'

By late afternoon they'd cool off again. Honestly, that made me trust it more. It meant the change was coming from the cocoa, not from me wishing for it.

Three mornings in a row. It wasn't luck anymore.

Day 5

I woke up with warm feet for the first time in two years

This is the morning I texted my sister-in-law before 7 a.m.

I woke up and my feet were warm. Before coffee, before the scoop, before I'd even gotten out of bed. One pair of socks instead of two, and I'd kicked the wool ones off in my sleep.

Day 5: 'my feet were already warm, before the coffee. One pair of socks. In bed. In August.'

The study had said the effect builds up over the first several days and then holds. I'd read that and not believed it. Now I did.

Day five, and my feet were warm before I'd done anything that morning to earn it.

Day 7

I carried my grandson up 14 stairs without stopping

End of the first week I was at my daughter's house. Her stairs have 14 steps, and for the past year I'd been stopping at the landing and pretending to look at the family pictures so nobody would notice.

This time I carried the baby up all 14 without stopping. No burning in my calves, no catching my breath at the top.

Day 7: 'Fourteen steps to the second floor. I went up them carrying the baby without stopping at the landing.'

My daughter noticed before I did. I asked her to take a picture from the top so I'd have it for this.

One week in, and the stairs stopped being a problem.

Day 10

I skipped a day to see if it was really the cocoa

I wanted to know if this was real or if I was talking myself into it, so on day ten I didn't take it.

By mid-morning my hands were cool again. No two-hour warm-up. But my feet stayed warm all day, so the part that had built up over the week was still there.

That settled it for me. I haven't skipped a day since.

Day 14

The 2-mile walk I gave up on last year

There's a 2-mile loop around the reservoir near us. Last fall I quietly stopped doing it, because my legs would seize up on the back half and my husband would have to slow down and wait for me.

On day 14 we did the whole loop. He got ahead of me on the path, turned around and took this picture, because I'd told him the whole point of the two weeks was to have proof.

Day 14: 'the loop at the reservoir, 2.1 miles… We did the whole thing.'

I'm not going to tell you my arteries are clean. I can't see inside them. What I can tell you is what changed in 14 days: warm hands by mid-morning, warm feet when I wake up, stairs without stopping, and a walk I'd given up on.

Two weeks. One scoop a day, in coffee I was already drinking.

What it costs, and why I'm still taking it

One bottle is 25 scoops for $39.99, about $1.60 a day. That's less than I was spending on fish oil and cayenne together, and those did nothing.

Two things I checked before I ordered more, because I'm careful with this stuff: it's made in the USA, and it's tested for heavy metals, which matters more with cocoa than I realized.

'two years and a drawer full of capsules' — compression socks and half-empty bottles next to one Avena bottle.

I'm on the buy-four-get-four-free box now, which comes out to $20 a bottle. It comes with a 30-day satisfaction guarantee, and that's the only reason I let myself try the first bottle.

If your hands and feet are cold right now and you've tried everything, it's probably your nitric oxide, not your socks. That's what I wish someone had told me two years ago. 👇