This may cause many a heart to leap, but chocolate, once again, has been placed in the "beneficial for your health" category. This time, quite fittingly, it's your heart that may benefit from eating this most decadent of treats. Through the ages, benefits such as increased energy as well as libido have been attributed to chocolate, which has also been considered good for diarrhea and migraines, and treating syphilis and even cancer.
Some of these are even true; antioxidant catechins found in dark chocolate were found to be the active ingredient responsible for lowering lung cancer rates,
1 as well as rectal cancer.
2 According to a recent study in Denmark,
3 people who consume cocoa one to three times a month were about 10 percent less likely to be diagnosed with atrial fibrillation, or AFib, the medical term for irregular heart rhythm, compared to people who ate chocolate less than once a month.
Elizabeth Mostofsky, an epidemiologist at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, and a team of researchers analyzed the data and found "a significant association between eating chocolate and a lower risk of AF —
suggesting that even small amounts of cocoa consumption can have a positive health impact."
4The team's new research, published in the journal
BMJ Heart,
5 showed a reduced risk of AFib for women who ate one serving of chocolate per week, while the biggest reduction for men was associated with eating two to six servings per week.
Previous studies in 20106 and 2015, known as the Physicians' Health Study, had drawn no such conclusions, and the latter review involved 33,000 Americans.
7 Eating cocoa and foods containing it may be heart beneficial due to the high number of antioxidant, inflammation-fighting and blood vessel-relaxing flavanols cocoa contains, the researchers concluded.
Comment: For more on these foul ingredients being injected into people all over the world see: