A study showed that middle-aged and elderly Swedish women who consume a moderate amount of chocolate have much lesser risk of heart failure. This was revealed by a study published in the journal of the American Heart Association.
The nine year study which involved 31,823 middle aged as well as elderly Swedish women, scrutinized the association between how eating high-quality chocolate influenced the risk of heart failure.
It was found in the study that the consumption of high quality chocolate; higher density of cocoa such as dark chocolate had the following results:
1. Women consuming on average roughly one to two servings of fine quality chocolate per week had as much as 32 percent less risk of suffering from heart failure.
2. Women who consumed only 1 to 2 servings of high quality chocolate per month had 26 percent lesser risk of heart failure.
3. However, those who ate one serving of chocolate per day had apparently no positive benefits countering heart failure.
According to Murray Mittleman, M.D., Dr. P.H the lead research for this study said that women eating chocolate everyday probably do not have the protective effects of chocolate as their calories are gained primarily from chocolate and not from nutritious food.
Mittleman the director of the Cardiovascular Epidemiology Research Unit at Harvard Medical School’s Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston says that it can’t be escaped that chocolate is relative dense in calories and is often a source of weight gaining. However, for a small treat twice per week chocolate is an ideal choice.
According to short studies, chocolate concentrated with the substance known as ‘flavonoids’ help in decreasing blood pressure. However, this current study is the first one to demonstrate how ‘flavonoids’ help to establish long-term benefits to cardiovascular diseases.
The study was carried-out by self-reported food-frequency questionnaire on participant aged from 48 to 83 years. The analysis was then associated with statistics from national Swedish hospitalization as well as death registries from the period 1998 to 2006. The study used various statistical modelling to come to the outcome that moderate consumption of chocolate help to reduce the risk of heart failure.
According to Mittleman, the variation in the quality of chocolate affects the implication of consuming chocolate. For instance, in Sweden even milk chocolate has a higher density of cocoa than dark chocolate available in the United States.
In pure terms, 90 percent of the chocolates consumed in Sweden were milk chocolate, but they contained a total of 30 percent of cocoa solids. However, for the American standard only 15 percent of cocoa solid is required in dark chocolate. In other words, American chocolate is less beneficial for the heart compared to the chocolate eaten by Swedish women.
According to Linda Van Horn, Ph.D., R.D., past chair of the American Heart Association Nutrition Committee and professor in the Department of Preventive Medicine at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago says that the idea is not to eat more chocolate to be healthy rather to eat moderately.
According to Mittleman, ways that can help to decrease heart failure is worth considering. Currently, one percent of all Americans above the age of 65 years suffer from heart failure as they age.
Source: E-science and Heart Organisation
Thu, Aug 19, 2010
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