Heart Disease Prevention - Can Chocolate Really Prevent Heart Disease?

Being the most liked food in the world, chocolate is made from cocoa beans. Many studies have revealed that it has several health benefits. German researchers recently found that substances called flavanols that are found in cocoa could help people have healthy heart circulation as they get older. Find out more at:

Heart Disease Prevention - Can Chocolate Really Prevent Heart Disease?

What Can Chocolate Do To Cut Cardiovascular Disease Risk?

Chocolate is something that most people hard to resist. It is estimated that a typical American consumes over 10 pounds of chocolate annually. This leads to an interesting question: Would chocolate pose any threat to our health?

According to scientists, chocolate contains compounds called "flavanols" that is a naturally occurring antioxidant and has anti-inflammatory properties. Many large-scale studies have linked consumption of flavanol to lower risk of cardiovascular disease. Nevertheless, only few studies have tested the direct effect of chocolate consumption.

That is why researchers from San Diego State University intend to find out whether chocolate, particularly dark chocolate, might protect against the risk of cardiovascular disease (including heart disease and stroke) by lowering blood pressure, blood flow, and improving blood lipid levels.

31 participants were randomly assigned to consume for 15 days a daily serving (50 grams) of regular dark chocolate (containing 70 percent of cocoa), dark chocolate (containing 70 percent of cocoa) that had been overheated or bloomed, or white chocolate (containing 0 percent of cocoa).

At the outset of the study, researchers recorded these participants’ readings on blood pressure, forearm skin blood flow, circulating lipid profiles, and blood glucose levels.

With reference to participants assigned to white chocolate group, those consuming either form of dark chocolate had lower blood glucose and low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL or the bad cholesterol) levels coupled with higher high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL or the good cholesterol).

The findings, which were presented on April 24, 2012 at the Experimental Biology 2012 meeting in San Diego, CA, indicated that dark chocolate might reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease by reducing the glucose levels and lipid profiles.

Meanwhile, the researchers warned that people should consume dark chocolate in moderation because chocolate can easily raise daily amounts of saturated fat and calories. Remember this, the study participants were allowed to consume not more than 50 grams of chocolate a day.

The researchers are planning follow-up studies involving more participants and a longer duration of chocolate consumption.

Is Chocolate Good Or Bad for Your Heart?

Chocolate is one that many of us have difficulty to refuse. Many scientists have studied the possible impacts of the consumption of chocolate on our bodies including heart and arteries. As you might expect, some of these findings might be positive while others were just negative.

For instance, a paper published in the British medical journal Lancet in 2007 pointed out that any health claims about dark chocolate might not be justified. Instead, many of these chocolate products are harmful to the heart and arteries as they are actually abundant in fat and sugar.

Plain chocolate is rich in flavanols or plant chemicals that are thought to protect the heart and lower blood pressure. However, because of its bitter taste, most manufacturers usually remove flavanols during their making of chocolate products. Therefore, even the co-called dark chocolate products can have no flavanols.

On the other hand, researchers from the Yale Center for Perinatal, Pediatric & Environmental Epidemiology, at Yale University reported on April 28, 2008 in the May 2008 issue of Epidemiology that daily consumption of a quality dark chocolate is healthy for pregnant women and protects them from getting into hypertension (high blood pressure).

The study involved 2,291 women and spanned over a period of 4 years (1996 to 2000). The density of theobromine (a chemical in chocolate) in the arterial cord blood extracted from the umbilical cord at delivery was measured. The results shown that there was a 69 percent less chance of developing preeclampsia if pregnant women ate rich, dark chocolate.

Preeclampsia, affecting up to 8 percent of pregnancies, is a major pregnancy complication with cardiovascular manifestations such as hypertension.

The theobromine concentrations in chocolate can vary from 0.15 percent to 0.46 percent. According to the researchers, the darker the chocolate is, the better it is. Those highly processed chocolate can be rich in fat and sugar and low in the amount of theobromine.

Besides theobromine, chocolate also contains other chemicals including magnesium, which lowers hypertension, and flavanoids, which are potent antioxidants.

If you like chocolate very much and at the same time want your heart to be healthy, you should only put those dark and bitter chocolates (less fat and sugar) in your future buying list.