12 good reasons to eat chocolate

Are you a chocolate lover? Then stop feeling guilty, because what you are doing, as long as you keep a balanced diet, can benefit your health. If you don’t like chocolate that much, maybe we will try to convince you about 12 good reasons to eat chocolate once in a while.

1. Chocolate decreases stroke risk
Eating more than 45 grams of chocolate per week – about two bars – lead to a 20 percent decrease in stroke risk among women, according to a Swedish study. Chocolate contains flavonoids, whose antioxidant properties help to fight strokes.

2. Chocolate reduces the likelihood of a heart attack
The habit of eating chocolate prevents blood clots, which result in reducing the risk of heart attacks. A study says that blood platelets clump together more slowly in chocolate eaters.

3. Chocolate protects against inflammations
For dark chocolate lovers, this is the point of their lives. Eating a dark chocolate bar per week keeps the body inflammation-inducing proteins away. Besides, the risk of you having a heart attack will also decrease.

4. Chocolate makes you a math genius
The flavonoids contained in the chocolate are proven to have helped people with their mental math. The study, made by British scientists, showed that the subjects had an easier time counting backward from a randomly generated number between 800 and 999 after drinking a cup of hot chocolate than they did without the cocoa.

5. Chocolate might prevent cancer
Cocoa contains a compound named pentameric procyanidin (pentamer) which disrupts cancer cells’ abilities to spread on the body. When a group of researchers from Georgetown University treated cancer cells with pentamer in 2005, the proteins that allow cancer to grow were suppressed and stopped dividing.

6. Risk of diabetes reduced by chocolate
A study developed by a British scientist, Savero Stranges, found that eating chocolate increases insulin sensitivity, which reduces the risks of getting diabetes. Related with contributors of the research who did not eat chocolate every day, the ones that did had less insulin resistance and enhanced the liver enzyme levels.

7. Chocolate is good for your skin
Chocolate is not responsible for acne breakouts like some myths told us all the time. Dark chocolate, at least, it is good for your skin. The flavonoids, once again, protect women’s skin from the sun’s Ultra Violet rays, according to German researchers. Even though this is a convenient truth, sunscreen shouldn’t be skipped every time someone exposes them self to the sun.

8. Blood flow improved by chocolate
At Harvard University, scientists forced test subjects to undergo two weeks of chocolate eating. A fortnight of chocolate-stuffing sped up blood flow through the subjects’ middle cerebral arteries. More chocolate means, then, more blood to the brain, which is particularly useful for athletes and students before exams.

9. Chocolate can improve coughs
If you are coughing for many days without anything stopping it, eat chocolate. One of its sweet’s chemical components, theobromine, seems to reduce the activity of the vagus nerve, the part of the brain that triggers humans to cough.

10. Chocolate strengthens the brain
The dark chocolate components shield cell in the brain that protects it from damage caused by a stroke. Epicathecin, one of the chocolates’ many compounds, reduce the brain damage in cases of people who suffered a stroke.

11. Eat chocolate to live longer
One of the oldest women that ever lived was 122 years old. She ate 1.13 kilograms of chocolate a day and scientist from Harvard believe that the chocolate can add up to two years of your life. Nevertheless, be careful with the chocolate you buy. Usually, the chocolate that is sold in the stores is full of sugar and heavily processed chemicals.

12. Chocolate relieves the stress
Everyone gets stressed every now and then. All sorts of illnesses are likely to be formed in our bodies due to stress conditions. Eating a chocolate bar will decrease the stress levels and bring joy to the body. After this, less cortisol and epinephrine are released during stressful situations. Make sure that once you race to the stores to buy a bar of chocolate, it is rich in cocoa since it is this bean that allows the well-being of your organism.