Dark chocolates may be good for your heart's health

Chocolates have always made our hearts us happy. But now there is a scientific reason discovered behind chocolates being good for our hearts. Scientists have found that  flavanol-rich cocoa products such as dark chocolates are good for a healthy heart.

Scientists have carried out a systematic review and meta-analysis of 19 randomised controlled trials (RCTs) consumption of cocoa.

The meta-analysis studied whether consuming flavanol-rich cocoa products indicated any improvement in cardiometabolic health compared to consunption of placebos with very less cocoa flavanol content. 1,139 people volunteered for the trials.

"Our meta-analysis of RCTs characterises how cocoa flavanols affect cardiometabolic biomarkers, providing guidance in designing large, definitive prevention trials against diabetes and cardiovascular disease in future work," said Simin Liu, professor at Brown University in US.

"We found that cocoa flavanol intake may reduce dyslipidemia (elevated triglycerides), insulin resistance and systemic inflammation, which are all major subclinical risk factors for cardiometabolic diseases," said Liu.

The summarised from 19 trials by the team's research found benefits of eating flavanol-rich cocoa for cardiometabolic health.

Small but statistically noticeable improvements were found among the people who ate flavanol-rich cocoa product vs those who did not.

Volunteers who ate between 200 and 600 milligrammes of flavanols a day , were found to have benefitted much and so the effects were seen more among them.

The results were declines in blood glucose and insulin, as well as another indicator of insulin resistance called HOMA-IR. Signs like improvement in HDL, or "good," cholesterol were also visible.

"The treatment groups of the trials included in our meta-analysis are primarily dark chocolate - a few were using cocoa powder-based beverages," said graduate student Xiaochen Lin.

"Therefore, the findings from the current study apparently shouldn't be generalised to different sorts of chocolate candies or white chocolates, of which the content of sugar/food additives could be substantially higher than that of the dark chocolate," Lin said.

The study was published in an international journal.