Chocolate can do
good things for your heart, skin and brain
By
Marjorie Ingall
Listen to the way people malign chocolate: Sinful! Decadent! To die
for! There's even that popular restaurant dessert known as "Death by Chocolate."
But is this any way to talk about a loved one -- especially during the season of
comfort and joy?
Bite your tongue! Evidence is
mounting that some kinds of chocolate are actually good for you. Here's the
latest about the healthy side of your chocolate habit and taste-tested advice on
what to try. Merry munching.
A happier
heart
Scientists at the Harvard
University School of Public Health recently examined 136 studies on coco -- the
foundation for chocolate -- and found
it does seem to boost heart health, according to an article in the European
journal Nutrition and Metabolism.
"Studies have shown heart
benefits from increased blood flow, less platelet stickiness and clotting, and
improved bad cholesterol," says Mary B. Engler, Ph.D., a chocolate researcher
and director of the Cardiovascular and Genomics Graduate Program at the
University of California, San Francisco, School of Nursing. These benefits are
the result of cocoa's antioxidant chemicals known as flavonoids, which seem to
prevent both cell damage and inflammation.
Better blood
pressure
If yours is high,
chocolate may help. Jeffrey Blumberg, Ph.D., director of the Antioxidants
Research Laboratory at Tufts University, recently found that hypertensive people
who ate 3.5 ounces of dark chocolate per day for two weeks saw their blood
pressure drop significantly, according to an article in the journal
Hypertension. Their bad cholesterol dropped, too.
People who ate the same
amount of white chocolate? Nothing. (It doesn't have any cocoa -- or flavonoids.) Word to the wise: 3.5 ounces is roughly equal to a big bar of
baking chocolate, so the participants had to cut about 400 calories out of their
daily diets to make room. But you probably don't have to go to those lengths.
Just a bite may do you good, Blumberg says.
Muscle
magic
Chocolate milk may help
you recover after a hard workout. In a small study at Indiana University, elite
cyclists who drank chocolate milk between workouts scored better on fatigue and
endurance tests than those who had some sports drinks.
Yoo-hoo!
TLC for your
skin
German researchers gave
24 women a half-cup of special extra-flavonoid-enriched cocoa every day. After
three months, the women's skin was moister, smoother, and less scaly and red
when exposed to ultraviolet light. The researchers think the flavonoids, which
absorb UV light, help protect and increase blood flow to the skin, improving its
appearance.
Brain
gains
It sounds almost too
good to be true, but preliminary research at West Virginia's Wheeling Jesuit
University suggests
chocolate may boost your memory, attention span, reaction time, and
problem-solving
skills by increasing
blood flow to the brain. Chocolate companies found comparable gains in similar
research
on healthy young women
and on elderly people.
Good loving
(maybe)
Finally, Italian
researchers wanted to know whether chocolate truly is an aphrodisiac. In a
survey of 143 women published in the Journal of Sexual Medicine, those who ate
chocolate every day seemed to have more sex drive, better lubrication, and an
easier time reaching orgasm. Pass the Godiva, right?
Not so fast. The women
who ate chocolate were all younger than the ones who didn't; it was age and not
chocolate that made the difference. Still, if a double-chocolate raspberry
truffle puts you in the mood, why let science get in the way?
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