subject: Is your blood pressure out of control? Advice about Xocai Dark Chocolate [print this page] Is your blood pressure out of control? Advice about Xocai Dark Chocolate
Do you have high blood pressure? Stressed about heart disease? Get a bon-bon. This could be the most incredible medical news of our time. Studies in two esteemed scientific journals affirm dark chocolate but not white chocolate or milk chocolate is good for you.
Chocolate Blood Pressure Drop
Dark chocolate not milk chocolate lowers high blood pressure, say Doctor Taubert and his University of Cologn contemporaries. Their report can be found in the Aug. 27 issue of The Journal of the American Medical Association .
But that's no license to go on a chocolate binge. Eating more dark chocolate can help lower blood pressure if you've reached a certain age and have mild high blood pressure, say the researchers. But you have to balance the extra calories by eating less of other things.
Antioxidants in Dark Chocolate
Dark chocolate but not milk chocolate or dark chocolate eaten with milk is a powerful antioxidant, report Mauro Serafini, PhD, of Italy's National Institute for Food and Nutrition Research in Rome, and colleagues. This discovery can be found in the August issue of Nature. What are antioxidants? Antioxidants eliminate free radicals from your body, which can cause serious illness.
This study basically says to order dark chocolate at he counter. Don't even think of washing it down with milk. And if health is your excuse for eating chocolate, remember the word "moderate" as you nibble.
The Results
The University of Cologne team studied seven women and six men, between the ages of 55 to 60 years old. Everyone had just been diagnosed with slight high blood pressure on average, systolic blood pressure (the top number) of 153 and diastolic blood pressure (the bottom number) of 84.
Every day for fourteen days, they ate a 100-gram chocolate bar and were asked to balance its 480 calories by not eating other foods similar in nutrients and calories. Half the patients got dark chocolate and half got white chocolate.
Astoundingly those who ate dark chocolate demonstrated a significant decrease in blood pressure (by an average of 5 points for systolic and an average of 2 points for diastolic blood pressure).
