Chocolate is Good for your Heart!

In a study of non-diabetic men and women published in the September, 2009 edition of the Journal of Internal Medicine, researchers in Sweden found evidence that people who eat chocolate have increased survival rates after a heart attack… and it may be that the more they eat, the better.
Chocolate contains flavonoid antioxidants that are widely believed to have beneficial effects on heart function.  Dark chocolate is richer in these antioxidants than lighter milk chocolate.

As a result, after controlling for age, sex, obesity, physical inactivity, smoking, education and other factors, the researchers found that the more chocolate people consumed, the more likely they were to survive a heart attack.

Compared with people who ate none, those who had chocolate less than once a month had a 27% reduction in their risk for cardiac death, those who ate it up to once a week had a 44% reduction and those who indulged twice or more a week had a 66% reduced risk of dying from a subsequent heart event. The beneficial effect remained after controlling for intake of other kinds of sweets.

A co-author of the paper, Dr. Kenneth J. Mukamal, an associate professor of medicine at Harvard, said that there was considerable data from other studies suggesting that chocolate lowered blood pressure and that this might be a cause of the lower cardiac mortality found in the study.

Other possible mechanisms were considered.

There are many reasonable biological mechanisms for a protective effect from chocolate yet Dr. Mukamal suggested, “although this is interesting and provocative, chocolate does not come without costs.  For people looking for a small snack to finish a meal, this is a great choice.  But it should be supplementing healthy eating and replacing less healthy snacks.”  In other words, a small dark chocolate snack may be a healthy lifestyle choice for many people.

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