Chocolate May Lower Heart Failure Risk in Women?

August 19, 2010 by Admin
Filed under: In the News

A nine-year study of 30,000 middle-aged and older Swedish women links moderate consumption of chocolate with a reduced risk of heart failure. Heart failure is the inability of the heart to supply sufficient blood flow to meet the body’s needs and occurs in about one percent of Americans over 65.

One to three servings of chocolate per month was found to lower risk by 26 percent compared to women who did not eat chocolate.

Similarly, the risk of heart failure was 32 percent lower among women consuming one to two servings a week; however, the risk for heart failure increased by 23 percent among those consuming one or more servings of chocolate daily; this may be due to high-calorie chocolate replacing more nutritious foods.

Previous studies have linked chocolate to reduced risk of high blood pressure or cardiovascular disease, possibly due to cocoa flavonoids. The researchers point out that these results apply only to the dark chocolate with at least 30 percent cocoa content commonly consumed in Sweden; most of the dark chocolate consumed in the U.S. has a15 percent cocoa content.

The full text of this study was released August 16, 2010 and will not be available until it is published in a future issue of the journal Circulation: Heart Failure.