Chocolate lovers, it’s time to stop feeling guilty about Godiva truffles: a new study involving nearly 158,000 men and women suggests that eating dark and milk chocolate on a regular basis can significantly lower risk of heart attack and stroke. People who ate the highest levels of chocolate had a 25% lowered risk of any cardiovascular disease episode – including heart attacks – and a 23% lowered risk of stroke.

Scientists attribute this preventative effect to flavonoids, which increase blood flow to the heart and brain and lower blood pressure while preventing clots, but Chinese medicine has an entirely different take. Because bitter is the taste that resonates energetically with and supports Heart energy, it’s a long-standing given in Chinese nutrition that eating bitter foods makes for a heart-healthier diet -including chocolate, endive, broccoli rabe, radicchio, arugula, bitter melon, even coffee and espresso.

Try chocolate dipped strawberries or cherries for extra heart benefit, as red foods are also beneficial for the Heart.

In a Natural News article about this study, “self-admitted chocolate lover” Howard LeWine, M.D., Chief Medical Editor for Harvard Health Publications, responded to these findings. “One of the interesting things about this research,” he wrote, “is that participants in the non-chocolate group had higher average weight, more artery-damaging inflammation, more diabetes, were less physically active and had diets with the least amount of fat compared to chocolate eaters.”

Read more about the study here:

http://www.naturalnews.com/050300_chocolate_flavonoids_cardiovascular_health.html#ixzz3fEtwv9MC