Eating a little chocolate may help reduce risk of heart failure

The consumption of moderate amounts of chocolate appears to lower the risk of heart failure, according to researchers in Sweden.

An observational study involving 31,823 Swedish women aged 48 to 83 years found that those who ate one to two servings of high quality chocolate per week had a 32 percent lower risk of developing heart failure over a 9-year period compared with those with no regular chocolate intake (95% CI: 0.50 to 0.93). In addition, women who consumed one to three servings per month had a 26 percent reduced risk of heart failure over this time (95% CI: 0.58 to 0.95). Meanwhile, more frequent consumption – one or more servings per day – did not significantly lower heart failure risk. [Circ Heart Fail 2010. Epub ahead of print]

“In this population… moderate habitual chocolate intake was associated with a lower rate of [heart failure] hospitalization or death but the protective association was not observed with intake of one or more servings per day,” said the authors.

High levels of flavanoids found in chocolate have been shown to lower blood pressure in short term studies. This latest trial, which used chocolate with a high cocoa content, was the first to demonstrate the long-term benefits of chocolate consumption in terms of risk of heart failure, a condition which can result from persistently untreated elevated blood pressure.

That those women who ate chocolate on a daily basis did not experience a cardioprotective benefit was probably due to the extra calories gained from eating chocolate instead of more nutritious foods, said lead researcher Dr. Murray Mittleman, director of the Cardiovascular Epidemiology Research Unit at Harvard Medical School’s Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, US. “You can’t ignore that chocolate is a relatively calorie-dense food and large amounts of habitual consumption is going to raise your risks for weight gain… But, if you’re going to have a treat, dark chocolate is probably a good choice, as long as it’s in moderation.”

Professor Linda van Horn, professor in the department of preventive medicine at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago, Illinois, US, and immediate past chair of the American Heart Association Nutrition Committee, agreed. “Those tempted to use these data as their rationale for eating large amounts of chocolate or engaging in more frequent chocolate consumption are not interpreting this study appropriately,” she said. “This is not an ‘eat all you want’ take-home message. Rather, it’s that eating a little dark chocolate can be healthful, as long as other adverse behaviors do not occur, such as weight gain or excessive intake of non-nutrient dense ‘empty’ calories.” – GT

Source: mims.com