Chocolate For the Heart After a Heart Attack

This sweet study by researchers in Sweden found evidence that chocolate for the heart after a heart attack increases survival rates. The results are published in the September Journal of Internal Medicine.

1,169 nondiabetic men and women who had been hospitalized for a first heart attack were followed by the researchers. Each participant completed a standard health questionnaire that also included a question about chocolate consumption over the past 12 months.

A health exam was given to the patients three months after their discharge from the hospital and they were then followed for the next eight years.

Researchers found that the more chocolate people consumed, the more likely they were to survive. However, because it was an observational study and not a randomized trial, cause and effect cannot be definitively established.

Compared with people who ate none, those who had chocolate less than once a month had a 27 percent reduction in the risk for cardiac death, those who ate it up to once a week had a 44 percent reduction and those who ate it twice or more a week had a 66 percent reduction in their risk of dying from another heart attack.

Dr. Kenneth J. Mukamad, co author and associate professor of medicine at Harvard said that there was considerable data from other studies suggesting that chocolate lowered blood pressure and that this might be a cause of the lower cardiac mortality found in the study.

Whatever the cause, chocolate for the heart after a heart attack can only be a good thing!