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 People who ate chocolate one to three times per month were about 10
percent less likely to be diagnosed with atrial fibrillation than
those who ate the sweet treat less than once a month, researchers
found.
"As part of a healthy diet, moderate intake of chocolate is a
healthy snack choice," said lead author Elizabeth Mostofsky, of the
Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and the Beth Israel
Deaconess Medical Center in Boston.
The study cannot say for certain that it was the chocolate that
prevented atrial fibrillation, however.
Mostofsky and colleagues write in the journal Heart that eating
cocoa and cocoa-containing foods may help heart health because they
have a high volume of flavanols, which are compounds that are
believed to have anti-inflammatory, blood vessel-relaxing and
anti-oxidant properties.
Past studies have that found eating chocolate - especially dark
chocolate, which has more flavanols - is tied to better measures of
heart health and decreased risk for certain conditions like heart
attacks and heart failure, they add.
There isn't as much research on whether chocolate is also linked to
a lower risk of atrial fibrillation, which occurs when the upper
chamber of the heart beats irregularly.
At least 2.7 million people in the U.S. have atrial fibrillation,
which increases their risk for blood clots and resulting strokes,
heart failure and other complications, according to the American
Heart Association.
For the new analysis, the researchers used data collected for a
long-term study of 55,502 people in Denmark. The men and women were
between 50 and 64 years old when it began, and they provided
information about their diets when they entered the study between
1993 and 1997.
The researchers then linked that diet data to Denmark's national
health registries to see who was diagnosed with atrial fibrillation.
Overall, about 3,346 cases of atrial fibrillation occurred over an
average of 13.5 years.
Based on their diets at the beginning of the study period, people
who ate one serving, about 1 ounce (28.35 grams), of chocolate per
week were 17 percent less likely to be diagnosed with atrial
fibrillation by the end of the study than people who reported eating
chocolate less than once a month.
Similarly, those who ate 2 to 6 ounces per week were 20 percent less
likely to be diagnosed with atrial fibrillation while those who ate
more than an ounce of chocolate a day were 16 percent less likely to
have the condition.
Among women, the biggest risk reduction was tied to eating one
serving of chocolate per week. For men, the biggest reduction came
with eating two to six servings per week.
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"I think our message here is that moderate chocolate intake as part
of a healthy diet is an option," Mostofsky told Reuters Health.
The researchers caution that they can't account for unmeasured
factors, such as kidney disease and sleep apnea, that may influence
the risk of atrial fibrillation. They also didn't have data on the
type of chocolate or the amount of flavanols participants ate. Their
diets may have also changed over the nearly 14 years of data
collection.
The data also suggests the participants who ate the most chocolate
consumed more calories but had a lower body mass index - a measure
of weight in relation to height - than people who ate the least
chocolate, noted Alice Lichtenstein, director and senior scientist
at the Cardiovascular Nutrition Laboratory at Tufts University in
Boston.
"It’s very likely - if I had to bet - that these people were more
physically active," said Lichtenstein, who was not involved in the
new study.
She said people likely can't get around the fact that they need to
have a healthy diet, be physically active and not smoke to optimize
their health.
"There is no quick fix," she told Reuters Health.
Drs. Sean Pokorney and Jonathan Piccini write in an accompanying
editorial that the study's findings are interesting and warrant
further consideration despite their limitations.
"A double-blind randomized controlled trial is needed to evaluate
the true efficacy of chocolate for the prevention of (atrial
fibrillation) and such a trial would need to incorporate quantified
doses of cocoa," write Pokorney and Piccini, of Duke University
Medical Center in Durham, North Carolina.
SOURCE: http://bit.ly/2q8M5xs Heart, online Mary 23, 2017.
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