- MUNICH (Reuters) -- Good
news for chocoholics -- eating dark chocolate improves healthy blood flow,
according to research published on Sunday.
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- Greek scientists said they had demonstrated for the first
time how chocolate improved the function of blood vessels, allowing them
to dilate, thereby preventing the formation of potentially damaging clots.
Dr. Charalambos Vlachopoulos of Athens Medical School told the annual meeting
of the European Society of Cardiology that eating 100 grams of dark chocolate
improved function in healthy young adults for at least 3 hours.
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- The heart-protecting properties of dark chocolate, which
contains high levels of a kind of antioxidant called flavonoids, have been
acknowledged for some time.
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- But the latest research sheds new light on how the mechanism
might work, by protecting blood vessels from the damaging effects of unstable
oxygen compounds called free radicals.
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- The Greek study involved 17 health volunteers who ate
either 100 grams of dark chocolate or a non-chocolate substitute. On another
day the groups were swapped over.
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- The results showed that functioning of the endothelium,
a thin layer covering the innermost surface of blood vessels, was improved
in the dark chocolate group but not in the other.
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- Last year, a group of Italian and British scientists
found plain chocolate increased levels of antioxidants in the blood by
nearly 20 percent. Milk chocolate did not have the same effect, however,
possibly because milk interferes with the absorption process.
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- http://news.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=healthNews&storyID=6095994
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