Is Chocolate Healthy?

The latest thing we’re hearing is that chocolate may in fact be healthy, which is something most of us are just thrilled to hear. Chocolate is reported lately to make the blood vessels far more flexible so that they are not rigid and don’t become brittle. Those of us who love chocolate can appreciate this news very much. This is just one more piece in the puzzle that tells us chocolate is in fact good for you.

The last findings regarding chocolate told us that it had the same type of antioxidants that were contained in red wine and flavanoids as well.

These things don’t raise cholesterol and tend to lower the tackiness of the platelets which means that the blood clots don’t form as easily and artery blockages are prevented.That’s definitely good news for all of us chocolate eaters.

Researchers at Athens Medical School of Greece studied 17 healthy people who had volunteered to eat a quarter pound of dark chocolate and then take part in ultrasound testing. This was done to check how the chocolate would affect the function of the endothelial cells in the walls of the blood vessel.

Normally those cells are the ones that control the blood vessels level of stiffness. What they found was that the days that the volunteers ate their dark chocolate they had vastly improvedendothelial cell function, but those who ate the artificial chocolate did not have improved function.The good effects lasted about 3 hours. This was done several times and the results were repeated each time. The ones who had eaten the darker chocolate were experiencing better function of theendothelial cells that prevented the arteries from becoming brittle.

The medical community finds these interesting but as of yet they just aren’t sure what they mean. It stands to reason that too much chocolate puts fat on the body and that would negate the entire purpose for eating it but it may be that dark chocolate on a regular basis could help to spell one way to prevent heart disease.

A very tasty way to prevent heart disease.