Chocolate Prevents High Blood Pressure, Stroke
Willy Wonka might have got it right- chocolate can be a sweet way to regulate blood pressure and thus protect the heart, according to a report by German researchers.
A new study shows that heart attack survivors can benefit from eating chocolate. But before you stock up on chocolate bunnies, consider this: the benefit of chocolate was higher among people who consume about 7.5 grams of chocolate every day. That works out to about one-quarter ounce, which is just an appetizer of a typical chocolate bar, which weighs 1.55 ounces.
However consuming 7.5 grams of chocolate results in significantly lowering blood pressure than eating a little part of it, according to Brian Buijsse, the German Institute of Human Nutrition in Nuthetal, Germany, and colleagues.
They published their findings online in the European Heart Journal.
“It’s a little early to make recommendations [about chocolate consumption],” Buijsse told MedPage Today, cautioning that more studies are needed. “But a future recommendation could be that if people eat a small amount of chocolate, they can replace it for something else, maybe leaving out a snack or another sweet.”
Chocolate has been studied extensively over the past ten years for its potential benefit in heart and vasculature. Just last month, a study found that chocolate reduces the risk of stroke.
For this study, researchers studied nearly 20,000 patients who were enrolled in the study of a large cancer in Europe. All patients were aged 35 to 65 and the study was conducted from 1994 to 2006.
Dietary habits and health outcomes was assessed using a questionnaire, and the cohort was followed for an average of eight years. The researchers also asked a subset of 1,568 patients recall their consumption of chocolate during a period of 24 hours to determine what kind of eating chocolate – white, milk, or dark.
On mean arterial pressure was about a low point for both systolic – the first number in blood pressure – and diastolic said.
Those who ate the most chocolate had a 39 percent lower risk of the combined outcome of heart attack and stroke.
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Posted by Starwin on 30th March, 2010
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