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How is Chocolate Linked to Heart Disease? There has been debate on the link between chocolate and heart disease. While some argued that chocolate might benefit people with cardiovascular disease (heart disease and stroke), others insisted otherwise. According to a recent study, 5 out of 7 studies showed that chocolate would help heart disease. Researchers from the University of Cambridge reported on August 29, 2011 at the European Society of Cardiology Congress that chocolate consumption might reduce the risk of developing heart disease by 33 percent in. The findings were also published online in the ‘British Medical Journal’. Results pooled from 7 studies involving 100,000 people were examined, and it was found that only 5 of the studies showed eating chocolate would benefit cardiovascular health. The overall results showed that the highest levels of chocolate consumption were linked to 37 percent and 29 percent reduction in heart disease and stroke respectively, comparing with the lowest levels of chocolate consumption. However, there were some limitations in the pooled analysis, which did not differentiate between dark and milk chocolate. The researchers, therefore, suggested carrying out more research to find out whether chocolate actually benefits the heart or whether it is because of other confounding factor.
This is definitely not the very first research to highlight the beneficial effects of chocolate for people with cardiovascular disease. There were studies showing dark chocolate, in particular, is good for the blood system. In 2008, Italian researchers found that consuming dark chocolate regularly might reduce levels of inflammation that is strongly linked to heart and blood vessel disease. Another study in 2007 revealed that food rich in antioxidants known as flavonoids, including dark chocolate, apple and red wine, might help prevent postmenopausal women from coronary heart disease and stroke. A paper, published in November 8, 2010 in the ‘Archives of Internal Medicine’, reported that older women who ate more chocolate were less likely to develop heart disease over a nearly 10-year-period. Researchers from Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital in Australia found that women older than 70 who ate chocolate at least once per week were 35 percent less likely to be hospitalized or die from heart disease and nearly 60 percent less likely to be hospitalized or die from heart failure. More importantly, these women did not need to eat a lot of chocolate to have such benefit. The study, nevertheless, could not prove any cause-effect relationship. On October 18, 2011, Swedish researchers from Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm suggested in the ‘Journal of the American College of Cardiology’ that the more chocolate the women said they ate, the lower their risk of stroke. But they again could not prove that it was chocolate that lowered the risk of stroke, given the observational design of the study. Data from a mammography study that included self-reports of how much chocolate women ate in 1997 were examined. After excluding those women with a missing national identification number, those with implausible values for total energy intake, and those with a history of cancer, stroke, coronary heart disease, or diabetes mellitus before baseline, the researchers used the data of 33,372 women left, who aged between 49 and 83 years old, for analysis. While evidence seem to suggest chocolate might have theoretical benefits for heart disease patients, researchers still have to carry out rigorous studies to find out why and how that might be. After all, there are many better ways other than eating chocolate to help reduce heart disease risk. Meanwhile, the possible health benefit of chocolate could easily be outweighed by the unhealthy nature of commercially available chocolate, which is high in sugar and fat, unless the industry will take initiatives to reduce that. People, especially chocolate lovers, should not be lured by the findings and frequent chocolate consumption. Instead, it is recommended that people should consume small quantity of dark chocolate, which contains more cocoa and less sugar, instead of white chocolate, and more importantly, as a replacement for other energy-dense snacks.
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