12 October 2012GreenMedInfo.com
Margie King -
Ask
most women and they’ll tell you that a good dose of chocolate really
takes the edge off. It’s not a joke. Science confirms that eating dark
chocolate helps relieve emotional stress and also lowers blood
pressure.
A study published in the Journal of Proteome Research found
that consuming 40 grams (about 1.4 ounces) of dark chocolate daily for a
period of two weeks reduced levels of the stress hormone cortisol and catecholamines, the fight-or-flight hormones.
The
authors also concluded that their study “provides strong evidence that a
daily consumption of 40 g of dark chocolate during a period of 2 weeks
is sufficient to modify the metabolism of … healthy human subjects.”
Other
studies had already suggested that chocolate relieved stress but this
study provided evidence of the biochemical mechanism at work in
relieving stress.Read more