Blogs / Discoblog

Not that we need an excuse to eat chocolate, but if you’ve had a heart attack, you may want to grab the Ghirardelli. Scientists know that eating dark chocolate (not milk—that’s the obesity-feeder) can reduce person’s risk of stroke and heart disease. Now researchers have found that eating chocolate can increase a person’s chances of survival after they’ve suffered a heart attack.

In the Journal of Internal Medicine, Boston researchers published a study finding that when people who’d had a heart attack ate chocolate two to three times a week, they significantly reduced their risk of dying from heart disease.

The scientists studied over 1,000 non-diabetic Swedish men and women between the ages of 45 and 70, all of whom had suffered from a heart attack in the 1990s. They were asked about their diet over the past year and about how much chocolate they ate. The researchers compared their heath exam from the three months after their initial hospital stay to their condition eight years later. They found that “the incidence of fatal heart attacks correlated inversely with the amount of chocolate consumed.”

So what’s the secret in dark chocolate? The researchers believe the antioxidants in cocoa keep free radicals from damaging cells the body. Plus it tastes so darn good.

Related Content:
Discoblog: iChoc
80beats: First Chocoholics

Image: flickr/ eszter

Emergency rooms will be a little emptier next Monday because the end of daylight savings time appears to reduce the chances of getting a heart attack. A new study published in the New England Journal of Medicine found a small but consistent dip in the number of heart attacks on the Monday after “Fall back,” probably due to people getting an extra hour of shut-eye.

The Swedish researchers found the pattern after going through 20 years of data, from 1987 to 2006. They compared the days directly following the time shifts with the same day two weeks before and two weeks after, and found a 5 percent decrease in heart attacks on the Monday following the fall time shift. But the flip side of “Fall back” is “Spring forward,” where heart attacks increase in the few days after the time shift. The first Monday and Wednesday after “Spring forward” had a 6 percent rise in heart attacks, and the first Tuesday had a 10 percent increase. (If you’re reading this in the Southern Hemisphere, take care, because the time shift for you this weekend is actually “Spring forward.”)

(more…)