Chocolate lovers can celebrate this good news. A large new research project finds that one of the advantages of eating chocolate is that it may lower your chances of heart disease and also be beneficial for the brain.
In fact, eating chocolate regularly could reduce the chances of heart disease as well as stroke by almost one third according to researchers.
However, there is a down side… candy, cookies and chocolate drinks are also laden with sugar, fat and are high in calories, so if you indulge too much, you’ll gain weight, and increase your risk of heart disease.
Heart disease is actually a broad term that’s used to cover a variety of diseases that affect the heart. These include disease of the blood vessels (coronary artery disease) problems with heart rhythm (arrhythmias), infections or defects of the heart that are with you at birth.
Heart disease is also used to refer to conditions that involve narrowing or blockage of blood vessels that can lead to chest pain, a heart attack or stroke.
Earlier research has found that chocolate might offer some protection against hypertension and diabetes. These conditions are risk factors for both heart disease as well as stroke.
However, until now, there’s not been a large study that investigated whether chocolate does have an impact on the chances of heart disease. So, researchers have examined the results of 7 published studies that included over 100,000 subjects to see if there was a link between heart attack and stroke and chocolate.
Those who had the most chocolate showed a 37% smaller chance of heart disease; 29% reduced risk of stroke in comparison to those who had the least volumes of chocolate.
None of the studies distinguished between dark and milk chocolate, or the form the chocolate took – bars, drinks or cookies.
It’s also important to understand that the study doesn’t prove that chocolate lowers heart disease – there could be other factors that the chocolate eaters share that are behind their better heart health.
The findings do make you wonder just what’s in chocolate that’s so beneficial to the heart?
While this wasn’t covered under the scope of this research, the researchers credit the polyphenols, a type of antioxidant, that are able to up the production of nitric oxide in the body. This is likely to bring an improvement in blood pressure, as well as the flow of blood through the arteries.
In moderation, the experts explain, chocolate isn’t bad for you.
We know that chocolate is made from plants, and this means it naturally has many of the same health benefits as veggies do.
A small (3.5 ounces/day) amount of dark chocolate has been shown to be helpful in bringing down blood pressure and cholesterol (LDL, the bad kind), while also stimulating endorphin production which gives you a pleasant feeling, delivering serotonin which acts as an antidepressant and bringing your body theobromine, caffeine and other substances that help pick you up.
What’s more, only a third of the fats in chocolate have been shown to be bad for you.
These findings on the advantages of chocolate and blood pressure, considered impressive by some experts due to the size of the study, and the reduction in the chances heart disease, were presented at the recent Cardiology Congress, and also published online.
By: Kirsten Whittaker
