Chocolate is Good for Your Heart
Scientists claim that chocolate is good for your heart. AMEN! I LOVE those scientists. How are they good? They’ve discovered that foods rich in flavanoids (I want to call them FLAVORnoids) are associated with the lowering of cardiovascular disease risk factors such as high blood pressure and have even linked certain foods with specific benefits.
Eating chocolate or cocoa increased a measure called flow-mediated dilation, which is a good indication of blood flow in the veins. It also reduced blood pressure, both systolic (the upper number, reflecting the maximum pressure exerted when the heart contracts) by about 6 points, and diastolic (the bottom number, reflecting the maximum pressure when the heart is at rest), by about 3.3 points. But it didn’t seem to have an effect on so-called “bad” LDL cholesterol.
Soy protein reduced diastolic blood pressure by almost 2 points of mercury and improved bad cholesterol but didn’t improve so-called good HDL cholesterol. But those effects were found just for isolated soy protein, not for other soy products.
A habit of green tea drinking reduced bad cholesterol levels, but drinking black tea boosted both systolic and diastolic pressure — by 5.6 points for systolic and 2.5 for diastolic.
Ok. Calm down. This isn’t license to jump in a chocolate filled pool. No, no. It means stick with foods high in flavanoids and antioxidants: lots of fruit, small amounts of a good dark chocolate (at least 70 percent cocoa), plus the basics like onions and green tea and an occasional glass of red wine. Be reasonable about this. And don’t just eat any ole chocolate. Some are so terrible they could kill you, so stay with high quality and you can’t go wrong, normally.
Here’s a chocolate sugggestion
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