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Here's a sweet little story that might help lower your blood pressure if not your cravings. (I always thought WHITE chocolate was nothing but sugar and not very good for you. On the other hand DARK chocolate is an excellent anti-depressant for many.)
Study Dark Chocolate May Have Benefit
By LINDSEY TANNER, AP Medical Writer
CHICAGO - A small study suggests that eating dark chocolate can lower your blood pressure — a delicious instance in which something that tastes good might, for a change, be good for you, too. If the results can be confirmed, "you can sin with perhaps a little less bad feeling." The German study appears in Wednesday's Journal of the American Medical Association.
Thirteen adults with untreated mild hypertension got to eat 3-ounce chocolate bars every day for two weeks. Half of the patients got white chocolate, half got dark chocolate.
Blood pressure remained pretty much unchanged in the group that ate white chocolate, which does not contain polyphenols. But after two weeks, systolic blood pressure — the top number — had dropped an average of five points in the dark-chocolate group. The lower, or diastolic, reading fell an average of almost two points.
The results show dark chocolate "might serve as a promising approach to reduce systolic blood pressure," said lead author Dr. Dirk Taubert of the University of Cologne. The study received no industry funding — the researchers bought the chocolate themselves from the supermarket.
And now for you patch lovers, here's more good news on the estrogen patch.
August 29, 2003
Transdermal Estrogen Therapy Not Linked to Venous Thromboembolism
Laurie Barclay, MD
Aug. 7, 2003 — Transdermal estrogen therapy is not associated with an increased risk of venous thromboembolism (VTE), according to the results of a multicenter, case-control study published in the Aug. 9 issue of The Lancet.
"Oral but not transdermal estrogen replacement therapy (ERT) is associated with a risk of VTE in postmenopausal women," lead author Pierre Yves Scarabin says in a news release. "These data suggest that transdermal ERT might be safer than oral ERT with respect to thrombotic risk."
From 1999 through 2002, the investigators recruited 155 women with a first documented episode of idiopathic VTE, including 92 with pulmonary embolism and 63 with deep venous thrombosis, and compared them with 381 controls matched for center, age, and time of recruitment.
At enrollment, 21% of women with VTE and 7% of controls were current users of oral ERT, whereas 19% of women with VTE and 24% of controls were current users of transdermal ERT (the patch). After adjustment for potential confounding variables, women using oral ERT were more than three times more likely to develop VTE than were transdermal ERT users and nonusers of ERT.
"Our findings could be important in assessment of the risk-benefit profile of ERT," the authors write. "The effects of transdermal ERT on health outcomes should be assessed in randomized trials."
Lancet. 2003;362:428-432
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