Cocoa May Help Patients With Diabetes, Heart Failure

Chocolate bars are not normally something one thinks diabetes and heart failure patients should eat, but researchers are now saying patients have shown improvement after consuming a dark chocolate bar and a beverage enhanced with epicatechin, a flavonoid found in dark chocolate, every day for three months.

According to UPI, the test subjects' skeletal muscle mitochondria had major damage due to type 2 diabetes and heart failure. Damage to the heart and skeletal muscle often results in impaired physical capacity, and patients frequently suffer from shortness of breath, lack of energy, and difficulty walking.

After three months of eating a delicious chocolate bar every day (the brand consumed was unspecified), researchers found significant improvement in patients' mitochondria volume.

"After three months, we saw recovery — cristae numbers back toward normal levels, and increases in several molecular indicators involved in new mitochondria production," said Dr. Francisco J. Villarreal of the University of California, San Diego. 

While the study does not say anything about the effects of epicatechin on healthy people, or even people who are not profoundly ill, if all this talk of chocolate has you craving cocoa, take a look at some of our dark chocolate recipes.