If you were to ask people about their favorite type of candy, you can bet a good portion of people would name something chocolate. Chocolate, in all its varieties, is favored by young and old, all over the world. While it is often considered to not be the healthiest option, this is usually due to the added sugar and preservatives.
There is one healthy type of chocolate, and that is dark chocolate. Here are some things to know about dark chocolate so that you can increase your health while also enjoying this delicious treat.
Cacao or Cocoa?
The first thing that should probably get addressed, is that the kind of dark chocolate that is going to be discussed here is the kind of with at least 70 – 85% cacao. This substance is different from the common store-bought version called cocoa, in that cacao is the raw form of the ground bean and leaves two products, cacao powder and cocoa butter.
Cocoa that you see in stores is usually made with cocoa that has been heated at an extreme temperature. This process can destroy most of the natural nutrients and enzymes that the raw cacao would normally contain. In order for the chocolate to have benefit, the live and active components should be able to stay intact.
Real dark chocolate also has a lot less sugar than milk chocolate, so if you’re looking for the healthy dark chocolate, look for the dark chocolate with cacao.
Nutrition that Packs a Punch
Since childhood, the need for nutrition is repeated in a variety of ways on a nearly constant basis. Heavy emphasis is placed on telling children that they need to avoid indulging in candy, but this information is here to change the viewpoint on that.
Of course, over indulgence is generally not a good idea, and having a few pieces a week is okay, but what is so amazing about this kind of dark chocolate, is that it turns out that it contains more nutrition than most people would ever suspect.
A 100 gram piece of dark chocolate with over 75% cacao contains at least 10 grams of fiber, and almost 70% of the recommended daily amount of iron, which is higher than the amount of iron found in a similar portion of beef. It has nearly 60% of the daily amounts for magnesium, and almost the entire daily amount for copper and manganese.
It also contains other minerals that are very good for forming new healthy DNA in your cells. Even the fat content of chocolate is excellent, so when you’re feeling like a piece of chocolate, be sure to reach for the good stuff.
Consuming Dark Chocolate can Aid RDW
RDW or red blood cell distribution width is a measurement of range and variation as a component of blood count. Doctors believe that the high iron content and flavonoids contained in the chocolate have much to do with the increased distribution. This information was collected over four continuous decades of study, and it was discovered that these increases could affect the arterial health enough to prevent a wide range of heart diseases.
The doctors have come to use RDW as a metric for being able to predict heart disease, and the study found that the consumption of chocolate had all but erased the majority of the signs associated with imminent manifestations of the disease.
Strengthens Your Immune System
Lots of people are always looking for ways to prevent themselves from becoming sick with the common cold or flu. Between all of the nutritional elements and anti-inflammatory agents, dark chocolate has earned a serious place among modern medicine’s most coveted substances.
During the lengthy study on the effects of dark chocolate, scientists discovered that the mix of nutrients that are contained in dark chocolate have the ability to help give the immune system a massive boost which can decrease your chances of getting sick.
High in Antioxidants
With as much as goodness as dark chocolate has going on, it still has so much more to explore. This luscious treat is also high in antioxidants. These types of nutrients and natural chemicals are the first line of defense in aging and cancer, because age and cellular anomalies that become cancerous can often be neutralized in their early stages by the presence of antioxidants in the body.
These anomalies are caused by free radicals that are created through various ways like pollutants created by changing the molecular structure of something, or the presence of high concentrations of radiation.
A large portion of what people perceive as aging is the physical and human equivalent of rust, which is chemically a type of oxidation. Ingesting chocolate can actually bring a bit of glow and youthful appearance back to your skin because antioxidants allow your skin to repair that damage. It’s very interesting to realize that eating dark chocolate can help protect you from damage caused by the sun.
Anti-Inflammatory Effects
Do you ever feel as though your joints are stiff and swollen? Maybe sometimes your bowels feel sore and tender. These unpleasant effects are caused by inflammation. Inflammation is a physical response to stimulation that is intended to protect the body or signal that there is something wrong with a particular area.
Today, inflammation and inflammatory bowel diseases have become highly common all over the world, so heavy research is being done to see if there could be a way to extract anti-inflammatory agents from chocolate and other sources of anti-inflammatory plants in nature. Real dark chocolate contains a high dose of flavonoids that are very powerful anti-inflammatories.
Improves Your Cardiovascular Health
Another reason why dark chocolate is so amazing is because it also helps with your cardiovascular health. This is because it has natural unsaturated fats that help your body to deal with and metabolize the fats that are present in your blood stream. This lowers the cholesterol content of your blood and makes it more difficult for those free-floating bodies to attach themselves to the walls of your arteries and cause blockages.
That means that dark chocolate can protect you from strokes and heart attacks in some ways. These antioxidants and flavonoids also help to widen the diameter of your views and arteries so blood can pass through more freely, which makes them great vasodilators and further prevents the possibility of high blood pressure and heart disease.
During studies on cardiovascular health, nearly 500 people were tested for arterial plaque, and after 15 years, they had reduced the previous amount of plaque but over 50%. They’re unsure as to whether or not is was only the chocolate, but given the evidence of the effects of chocolate on arterial health and cholesterol, doctors believed that it was the most likely answer.
Dark Chocolate and Brain Health
Recently completed studies have shown that the smell of chocolate increases brain wave activity in the spectrum, which can help to relax you. This can be really great news for people with anxiety who love to have heaps of chocolate around, but what it really means is that it’s very likely that some kind of treatment involving the smell of chocolate is probably just over the horizon.
Another study that was conducted found that after 5 days of consumption, blood flow to the brain was increased by a noticeable amount, which improves some cognitive functions.
Studies involving the elderly have also been done, and have revealed that chocolate can also help them to increase some cognitive functionality. This is also the case for some of the patients with various mental impairments. Doctors believe that this might be due to the chemicals caffeine and theobromine, which are also known to increase blood
flow to areas of the brain.
What was truly surprising, was that they found that these chemicals could improve memory, spatial awareness and math functions. This could mean that having a few pieces of dark chocolate the day of an exam could increase your chances of recalling the needed information, so you might want to go pick up a pound of this new study aid.
Positive Effects on Blood Sugar
Science has recently discovered that dark chocolate can improve and reduce insulin resistance. Insulin resistance is often what takes place before someone develops diabetes. It is characterized by the buildup of glucose in the blood that can’t be regulated by insulin. When the body produces more insulin and the body fails to metabolize the glucose, the person is said to have insulin resistance. It’s important to note that the dark chocolate that was involved in these tests didn’t have any extra added sugars in the mix.
This is very important information, because this condition is often the precursor to diabetes, and a treatment that arrests these symptoms can easily be used to derive a sort of protection against developing diabetes. The tests also said that there were no positive results for anyone eating less than 2 – 3 servings per week, so there’s some good news!
Helps with Depression
When you feel down, what is the first thing you do? One very interesting piece of information has people talking about the role that certain chemicals play in the brain. Many of the chemicals that are found in dark chocolate have been shown to have mood enhancing properties, but there are a precious few that happen to stand out above the rest.
In studies done by mental health professionals, the chemical composition of chocolate was found to include the chemical phenylethylamine, which is an important agent that the body manufactures into the hormone serotonin. This means that low serotonin can be supplemented by eating foods containing phenylethylamine.
Dark Chocolate also contain the chemical anandamide, which is very similar to THC but without many of its effects. This chemical also has some mood-altering aspects, and has been found to be useful in emotion improvement, so now you can say for a fact that chocolate can cheer people up!
Pregnancy and Preeclampsia
Who would have thought that chocolate can have a positive impact on pregnancy? In studies that were done during and throughout the previous decade, mothers were given cacao dark chocolate to help test its effects on high blood pressure during pregnancy.
The Yale study led by Elizabeth Triche discovered that women who had consumed chocolate during pregnancy had healthier blood pressure than the women who didn’t and those who had consumed chocolate had been able to avoid instances of preeclampsia, which is a condition that is caused by blood pressure issues, and can harm the baby.
People who were found to be susceptible to the disease even experienced some arresting of the symptoms. As future research is conducted, it is highly likely that extracts aimed at preventing preeclampsia will be created with a high success rate. According to their research this was caused by the chemical theobromine which was mentioned earlier in this article.
Works as a Cough Suppressant
When you have a terrible cough, how do you deal with it? Some will lean towards taking over the counter medicines that suppress the muscular action by numbing the area when applied topically. Other will take syrups that are somewhat unpleasant to calm your cough, but how about a few pieces of chocolate? There have been studies that show dark chocolate can be wonderful for working as a cough suppressant.
Suppresses Your Appetite
Do you have trouble controlling your eating habits? Reach for a piece of dark chocolate after a healthy meal. Some of the chemicals in dark chocolate can signal the brain to feel as though you’re finished eating. This can be extremely useful when you’re having some pizza and you want to practice portion control. This means that this is one of the few snacks that you can eat and lose weight.
