Good News For Chocolate Lovers

By Author: Dr. Victor Marchione
Total Articles: 90
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Dark chocolate contains special ingredients that act as antioxidants and heart helpers. Essentially, this tasteful dessert that is loved by chocoholics everywhere prevents and combats the enemies that threaten your heart: high cholesterol, high blood pressure and hardened arteries.

In fact, the evidence is so strong for dark chocolate’s ability to protect the heart that you can go ahead and indulge and know that you are actually doing something good for your body.

Dark chocolate can actually reduce your blood pressure — and even improve insulin sensitivity, which is important in avoiding diabetes. Dark chocolate is rich in antioxidants — specifically, “flavonoids,” which keep your blood vessels healthy.

These flavonoids are also found in abundance in fruits and vegetables. People who keep diets that are high in these foods have flavonoids to thank for the healthy condition of their hearts.

Skeptical that dark chocolate should even be mentioned in the same sentence as fruits and vegetables when it comes to your health? Well, ...
... consider this: in one clinical trial, researchers added either 100 grams (g) of dark chocolate or 90 g of white chocolate to the diets of 15 healthy people in Italy.

Then they compared the effects. First, they noticed that dark chocolate improved the patients’ ability to break down blood sugar.

Then, they noticed that dark chocolate lowered blood pressure significantly after 15 days.

Neither effect was seen in those eating white chocolate.
Flavonoids might help improve blood pressure by helping blood vessels expand and contract, allowing for efficient blood flow.3

Another amazing study was published in another major medical journal — this time in The Journal of the American Medical Association. Again, it was found that dark chocolate lowered high blood pressure, whereas white chocolate did not.4

Researchers believe that older adults can eat dark chocolate and improve their health — as long as they remember to reduce calories in other foods in order to balance the increased calories you get through chocolate.

Well, as we all unfortunately know, there are several diseases out there that can turn fatal.

The big ones are heart disease and virtually any type of cancer.

Then there are conditions that predispose many of us to serious diseases.

In the case of cancer, it’s all about cellular changes that can form tumors if something goes wrong with your cells.

There are many things that can impact your cells and make them mutate and spread, but there are also many things that can help protect your cells and keep them well defended against the natural predators that trigger cancer.

These predators include the dangerous amino acid “homocysteine,” for instance, and of course, free radicals that wreak oxidative damage on your cells.

The same goes for heart disease — the number one cause of death in North America.
It has specific risk factors, too — some of the same ones that cancer does — and like cancer, heart disease can appear in many forms.

“Atherosclerosis” means that your arteries have hardened up because there are too many substances blocking the flow of blood. This is a dramatic risk factor for heart disease, because the heart’s pumping ability is weakened.

High cholesterol is usually the culprit here. Related to these two conditions is high blood pressure, which has been dubbed the “silent killer” because it goes entirely undetected until it’s triggered something as serious as a heart attack.

So, add a little dark chocolate to your diet and do something delicious to protect your health. Aim for 70% dark — anything higher, and you’ll find the taste a little bitter.

If you’re fine with the taste, though, go for it and try some 85% dark chocolate! The darker it is, the more health benefits you stand to gain.

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