HEART HEALTH
Be still my heart! Could it be
true? Some research suggests
that indulging in your love of
chocolate — within limits—might
just be good for your heart.
If you have a sweet tooth and chocolate is your dessert of choice, news
out of England might be particularly interesting to you. The study
found that middle-aged and older adults who eat up to 3.5 ounces of
chocolate a day (that’s more than two standard Hershey bars) seem to have
lower rates of heart disease than those who do not eat chocolate.
The study came to that conclusion
after following the health of nearly
21,000 residents of Norfolk, England,
for 11 years. Among those in the top
tier of chocolate consumption, 12%
developed or died of cardiovascular
disease during the study, compared to
17.4% of those who didn’t eat chocolate.
The results were published online
in the medical journal Heart.
DESIRE VS. EVIDENCE
Although the above might have
many of you running to stock up on
chocolate treats, we don’t yet know
enough to put eating chocolate on a
par with eating fruits, vegetables, and
whole grains.
All of the large studies, including the
one discussed here, are observational
studies. That means the researchers
asked questions about the participants'
eating habits, tracked their
health, and made statistical connections.
These kinds of studies can
generate important insights, but they
can’t prove cause and effect. It takes a
randomized trial to do that.
It’s possible that people who like to
eat chocolate do something else that
offers heart protection, like eat a wide
variety of healthful foods. One of the
interesting things about this research is
that participants in the non-chocolate
group had higher average weight, more
artery-damaging inflammation, more
LINKS: www.heart.org (American Heart Association)
24 COMMUNITY HEALTHCARE DIGEST • APR–JUN 2019 | WWW.CHDIGEST.COM
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