Chocolate pleasure: Report says it lowers risk of death among heart attack survivors

Ah, the pleasures of a fine piece of chocolate. We're always happy to hear that something many of us love so dearly actually could have a medicinal purpose. A new study reports that among neart attack survivors, those who ate chocolate two or more times a week had a substantial reduction in the risk of death from heart disease compared with those who never ate the delectable morsels, according to an article in Agence Presse France. Previous reports suggested chocolate could help lower blood pressure, improve blood flow and also reduced the rate of heart-related deaths in healthy older men and post-menopausal women. The new study, from Sweden's Karolinska Institute, is the first to report that consuming chocolate can help ward off death for those who have already had one heart attack. So we must be on the right track to love chocolate and perhaps these studies will chase away some of the guilt involved. The report appears in the Journal of Internal Medicine.