Helping With Chocoholic’s Guilt

It’s that wonderful time of year again. Christmas carols are heard pouring from the radio, lights are strung up on the houses, and people are lined up at department stores for their Christmas shopping. It’s also the time of year to pig out on chocolate! Candies, fudge, chocolate cakes and rich creamy pies are a staple of the holiday season, and this can cause a little guilt for many out there who are slightly conscientious about their weight and health. We all know that this is the season for eating, and for a lot of us, it’s also a season for larger pants. There’s no getting around the fact that a lot of chocolate can put on the pounds, but did you know that chocolate is also associated with a few nice health benefits? Recent studies have uncovered new information about this delectable treat, and for some, it’s just what we need to alleviate that chocoholic guilt!

It’s not loaded with vitamins or minerals, but what chocolate does contain might be a lot better for you than you would think. Chocolate is made from cocoa, and research is being done on what cocoa contains and how it affects the body. The results of these studies confirm that cocoa contains several different substances in small amounts that have positive effects in the body. Cocoa has stimulants that will awaken the mind, clean your mental functioning, and improve your alertness and make you more aware of the world around you, while the tryptophan in cocoa will relax you and relieve your stress. All of this is going on while the endorphins, as the human body’s natural opiates, go to work lowering your sensitivity to pain. Of course, because cocoa only contains rather small amounts of each of these substances, the effects are minimal. In fact, you’d have to consume unhealthy amounts of chocolate to noticeably recognize many of these effects, but these substances are present, and they only do good things for the body.

One area where chocolate does truly excel, however, is antioxidants. For those of you who don’t know, antioxidants are what Hollywood celebrities and health nuts are absolutely going crazy over. They’re agents that get absorbed by your body and protect it from free radicals. These are harmful products that damage the body, causing everything from the development of cancer to early aging. Chocolate, fortunately, contains a lot of these antioxidants – more, actually, than most other foods, even blueberries. Dark and milk chocolates have very high ORAC values, which are measurements that determine how powerful the antioxidant value of a food is. While dark chocolate has roughly twice the amount of antioxidants as milk chocolate, a 40 gram serving of milk chocolate has about the same antioxidant content of one glass of red wine.

Perhaps the greatest benefit to your health that chocolate has though is for your cardiovascular system. Recent studies have shown that chocolate is very good for nearly your entire cardiovascular system. A substance found in cocoa helps the body produce Nitric Oxide, a key player in healthy blood pressure and heart health. By helping the body to process this compound more efficiently, it helps to ensure that the blood is flowing at a healthy rate and workload on the heart is reduced. Chocolate further helps regulate blood flow by keeping blood platelets at normal amounts, thinning the blood. Keeping blood appropriately thin can help reduce the risk of developing clots and stroke.

While chocolate is normally viewed as being very good for you, it can actually be a healthy addition to your diet. It can help keep your heart and blood vessels in pristine condition, as well as ward off premature aging. The key to chocolate, of course, is that a little goes a long way, and while chocolate does have a few very important health benefits, it is also loaded with calories. Because of this, it is recommended that you intake chocolate between 3 to 5 times a month, to receive the most benefits while consuming the least amount of calories. Snack on chocolate wisely, and remember – it’s ok to splurge every once in a while, especially around Christmas!

Goji Berry Juice
Goji Berry Juice is the most amazing health discovery in 40 years.