5 Healthy Reasons to Eat Dark Chocolate!

A square a day could keep the Doctor away!

Seriously! 

While not everyone cup of tea, dark chocolate has been used to treat 'aliments' and 'conditions' for hundreds of years. To clarify, dark chocolate is chocolate with a cocoa content of above 60%. While some, including this blogger, find dark chocolate a little bitter, listen to what it can do for you before you reach for the diary milk [or even the apple] instead.

1. Dark Chocolate can reduce high blood pressure. 

It's been reported, by The New York Times [so it must be true] that dark chocolate may be more effective then many leading antihypertensive medications on the market. How? It's all down to the flavonoids in cocoa, they help to balance blood pressure and reduce blood clots - clever little things aren't they?!

2. Dark Chocolate can relieve PMS and boost your mood. 

This I found interesting! Many of us fairer sex will be used to craving certain foods at certains times of the month ;) Prehaps its been our body telling us what we needed all along? The caffine [another close friend of mine] and other chemicals help to boost our mood and relieve premenstral symptoms. Now before you start buying up shares and shelves of dark chocolate listen to this... not only will it do all this for us it will ALSO [or at least the chemical phenylethylamine in the chocolate will] trigger the feeling of 'falling in love' in some cases.[Ok off to the shops with you now, I'll wait until you get back.]

3. Dark Chocolate can reduce the risk of dying of a heart attack by up to 50%. 

The good people at John Hopkins have done a study, which has discovered that those who ate a couple of squares of dark chocolate a day their blood platelets clotted slower which would result in a 50% less chance of them dying of a heart attack. [Perhaps we can all brave the bitterness a little?] 

4. Dark Chocolate helps to ease chronic fatigue. 

[There are a hell of a lot of studies going on with dark chocolate] another has found that in adults who suffer from chronic fatigue eating 1.5oz of 85% cocoa [or more] reduced their fatigue! 

5. Dark Chocolate eases a persistent cough! 

[You guessed it!] Another [UK] study has discovered that theobromine, a component in cocoa, may be more effective as a cough medicine than standard drug treatments. 

In Conclusion  

I think there is very little that dark chocolate can't fix or accomplish - who knows the Presidency might be next :)