Valentine’s Day, Dark Chocolate, and Your Health

What do Valentine’s Day and dark chocolate have to do with your health?  Scientific studies have actually shown that dark chocolate has health benefits.  Dark chocolate is known to help lower blood pressure and be filled with valuable antioxidants.  When dealing with chocolate the fact is, the darker the chocolate the better.

Blood Pressure Benefits:  If you battle mild high blood pressure dark chocolate can be beneficial, but you’ll also have to balance out the extra calories of eating candy.  Although dark chocolate can lower your blood pressure, that’s no license to go on a chocolate eating rampage. 

Antioxidants:  Dark chocolate is a potent antioxidant.  The purpose of an antioxidants is to rid the body of free radicals, which are destructive molecules that lead to illnesses such as heart disease and cancer.

Darker Is Better:  Cocoa phenols are the compounds in dark chocolate known to lower blood pressure.  The darker the chocolate, the richer in cocoa phenols it will be.  An example is that European chocolate is generally richer in cocoa phenols than chocolate made in the US. 

We wish everyone a wonderful Valentine’s Day!  Our hope is that perhaps our fun Valentine’s Day fact can also in some way help your health.  Roselius Insurance Agency writes a great deal of Ohio health insurance and Indiana health insurance so we realize everyone can use a little help if it saves them money!