Chocolate & Health
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Chocolate & Health: Fact or Fiction?
“Chocolate Is Good For The Heart”
“When making chocolate chip cookies, you don’t measure using cups, you measure by heart”
…but how good is chocolate when it comes to heart health?
First, what is heart health?
A healthy heart typically has a low resting pulse rate and a strong, steady beat. This is affected strongly by exercise habits, and diet plays only a support role (can’t exercise without energy from food!).
It is also important to have blood pressure within a healthy range (with high blood pressure being a more common problem than low, so things that lower blood pressure are generally considered good).
- Flavanols, flavonoids, and polyphenols in chocolate contribute to lower blood pressure
- Dark chocolate is best for these, as milk chocolate contains much less cocoa solids and more unhelpful fats
- White chocolate contains no cocoa solids and is useless for this
- Some of the fats in most commercial chocolate can contribute to atherosclerosis which raises blood pressure and ultimately can cause heart attacks.
- If you’re diabetic, you will probably not get the usual heart-related benefits from chocolate (sorry)
The Verdict: dark chocolate, in moderation, can support good heart health.
“Chocolate Is Good For The Brain”
Chocolate has been considered a “brain food”… why?
- The brain uses more calories than any other organ (chocolate has many calories)
- The heart benefits we listed above mean improved blood flow—including to your brain
- Chocolate contains phenylethylamine, a powerful chemical that has a similar effect to amphetamines… But it’s metabolized in digestion and never makes it to the central nervous system (so basically, this one’s a miss; we had a good run with the other two, though!)
The Verdict: dark chocolate, in moderation, can support good brain health
“Chocolate Is An Aphrodisiac”
“If chocolate be the food of love, pass me that cocoa; I’m starving”
Most excitingly, chocolate contains phenylethylamine, the “molecule of love” or, more accurately, lust. It has an effect similar to amphetamines, and while we can synthesize it in the body, we can also get it from certain foods. But…
Our body is so keen to get it that most of it is metabolized directly during digestion and doesn’t make it to the brain. Also, chocolate is not as good a source as cabbage—do with that information what you will!
However!
Chocolate contains theobromine and small amounts of caffeine, both stimulants and both generally likely to improve mood; it also contains flavonoids which in turn stimulate production of nitric oxide, which is a relaxant. All in all, things that are convivial to having a good time.
On the other hand…
That relaxation comes specifically with a reduction in blood pressure—something typically considered good for the health for most people most of the time… but that means lowering blood pressure in all parts of your body, which could be the opposite of what you want in intimate moments.
Chocolate also contains zinc, which is essential for hormonal health for most people—the body uses it to produce testosterone and estrogen, respectively. Zinc supplements are popularly sold to those wishing to have more energy in general and good hormonal health in particular, and rightly so. However…
This approach requires long-term supplementation—you can’t just pop a zinc tablet / bar of chocolate / almond before bed and expect immediate results. And if your daily zinc supplementation takes the form of a 3.5oz (100g) bar of chocolate, then you may find it has more effects on your health, and not all of them good!
The Verdict: dark chocolate, in moderation, may promote “the mood”, but could be a double-edged sword when it comes to “the ability”.
“Chocolate Is Good During Menstruation”
The popular wisdom goes that chocolate is rich in iron (of which more is needed during menstruation), and indeed, if you eat 7oz (150g) of dark chocolate made with 85% cocoa, you’ll get a daily a dose of iron (…and nearly 1,000 calories).
More bang-for-buck dietary sources of iron include chickpeas and broccoli, but for some mysterious reason, these are not as commonly reported as popular cravings.
The real explanation for chocolate cravings is more likely that eating chocolate—a food high in sugar and fat along with a chemical bombardment of more specialized “hey, it’s OK, you can relax now” molecules (flavanols/flavonoids, polyphenols, phenylamines, even phenylethylamine, etc) gives a simultaneous dopamine kick (the body’s main “reward” chemical) with a whole-body physiological relaxation… so, little wonder we might crave it in times of stress and discomfort!
The Verdict: it helps, not because it serves a special nutritional purpose, but rather, because the experience of eating chocolate makes us feel good.
Fun fact: Tiramisu (this writer’s favorite dessert) is literally Italian for “pick-me-up”
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The Smartest Way To Get To 20% Body Fat (Or 10% For Men)
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20% body fat for women, or 10% for men, are suggested in this video as ideal levels of adiposity for most people. While we certainly do have wiggle-room in either direction, going much higher than that can create a metabolic strain, and going much lower than that can cause immune dysfunction, organ damage, brittle bones, and more.
This video assumes you want to get down to those figures. If you want to go up to those figures because you are currently underweight, check out: How To Gain Weight (Healthily!)
Look at the small picture
The main trick, we are told, is to focus on small, incremental changes rather than obsessing over long-term weight loss goals (e.g. 20% body fat for women, 10% for men).
Next, throw out what science shows doesn’t work, such as restrictive or extreme dieting:
- Restrictive dieting doesn’t work as the body will try to save you from starvation by storing extra fat and slowing your metabolism to make your fat reserves last longer
- Extreme dieting doesn’t work because no matter how compelling it is to believe “I’ll just lose it in this extreme way, then maintain my new lower weight”, the vast body of research shows that weight loss in this way will be regained quickly afterwards, and for a significant minority, may even end up putting more back on than was originally lost. In either case, you’ll have put your mind and body through the wringer for no long-term gain.
The recommendation comes in three parts:
- Shift your mindset: detach motivation from timelines and vanity goals; focus instead on lifelong health and sustainable habits.
- Use an analytical approach: apply engineering principles: collect honest data and identify bottlenecks. Track food intake consistently, even during slip-ups, to identify areas for improvement. You remember the whole “it doesn’t count if it’s from someone else’s plate” thing? These days with food trackers, a lot of people fall into “it doesn’t count if I don’t record it”, but a head-in-the-sand approach will not get you where you want to be.
- Tackle bottlenecks incrementally: focus on one small, impactful change at a time (e.g. reducing soda intake). This way, you can build habits gradually to prevent willpower burnout and sustain your progress.
As an example of how this looked for Viva (in the video):
- > 30% body fat stage: she focused on reducing processed foods and portion sizes.
- 29–25% body fat stage: she prioritized nutrient-dense foods and reduced dining out.
- 24–20% body fat stage: she added strength training, improved sleep, and addressed her cravings and energy levels.
In short: look at the small picture; adjust your habits mindfully, keep a track of things, see what needs improvement and improve it, and don’t try to speedrun weight loss; just focus on what you are tangibly doing to keep things heading in the right direction, and you’ll get there 1% at a time.
For more on all of this, enjoy:
Click Here If The Embedded Video Doesn’t Load Automatically!
Want to learn more?
You might also like to read:
Lose Weight, But Healthily ← our own guide, which is also consistent with the advice above, and talks about some specific things to pay attention to that weren’t mentioned in the video
Take care!
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Widen the Window – by Dr. Elizabeth Stanley
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Firstly, about the title… That “window” that the author bids us “widen” is not a flowery metaphor, but rather, is referring to the window of exhibited resilience to stress/trauma; the “window” in question looks like an “inverted U” bell-curve on the graph.
In other words: Dr. Stanley’s main premise here is that we respond best to moderate stress (i.e: in that window, the area under the curve!), but if there is too little or too much, we don’t do so well. The key, she argues, is widening that middle part (expanding the area under the curve) in which we perform optimally. That way, we can still function in a motivated fashion without extrinsic threats, and we also don’t collapse under the weight of overwhelm, either.
The main strength of this book, however, lies in its practical exercises to accomplish that—and more.
“And more”, because the subtitle also promised recovery from trauma, and the author delivers in that regard too. In this case, it’s about widening that same window, but this time to allow one’s parasympathetic nervous system to recognize that the traumatic event is behind us, and no longer a threat; we are safe now.
Bottom line: if you would like to respond better to stress, and/or recover from trauma, this book is a very good tool.
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Puritans Pride Resveratrol vs Life Extension Resveratrol – Which is Healthier
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Our Verdict
When comparing Puritan’s Pride Resveratrol to Life Extension Resveratrol, we picked the Life Extension Resveratrol.
Why?
It contains not only more resveratrol per serving (250mg compared to Puritan’s Pride’s 100mg), but also contains other goodies too. Specifically, each capsule also contains:
- Quercetin (150mg)
- Grape & berry blend (85mg)
- Fisetin (10mg)
Whereas the Puritan’s Pride softgels? The other top ingredients are soybean oil and gelatin.
Want to check out the products for yourself? Here they are:
Puritan’s Pride Resveratrol | Life Extension Resveratrol
Want to know more about these supplements? Check out:
Resveratrol & Healthy Aging
Fight Inflammation & Protect Your Brain, With Quercetin
Berries & Other Polyphenol-rich Foods
Fisetin: The Anti-Aging AssassinEnjoy!
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Functional Exercise For Seniors – by James Atkinson
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A lot of exercises books are tailored to 20-year-old athletes training for their first Tough Mudder. Others, that the only thing standing between us and a perfect Retroflex Countersupine Divine Pretzel position is a professionally-lit Instagrammable photo.
This one’s not like that.
But! Nor does it think being over a certain age is a reason to not have genuinely robust health, of the kind that may make some younger people envious. So, it lays out, in progressive format, guidelines for exercises targeted at everything we need to build and maintain as we get older.
The writing style is clear, and the illustrations too (the cover art is the same style as the illustrations inside).
Bottom line: if you’re looking for a workout guide that understands you are nearer 80 than 18, and/but also doesn’t assume your age limits your exercise potential to “wrist exercises in chair”, then this book is a fine pick.
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Water: For Health, for Healing, for Life – by Dr. Fereydoon Batmanghelidj
10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.
Notwithstanding the cover’s declaration of “you’re not sick, you’re thirsty”, in fact this book largely makes the argument that both are often the case simultaneously, and that dehydration plays a bigger role in disease pathogenesis and progression than it is credited for.
You may be wondering: is this 304 pages to say “drink some water”?
And the answer is: yes, somewhat. However, it also goes into detail of how and why it is relevant in each case, which means that there will be, once you have read this, more chance of your dehydrated and thus acutely-less-functional brain going “oh, I remember what this is” rather than just soldiering on dehydrated because you are too dehydrated to remember to hydrate.
The strength of the book really is in motivation; understanding why things happen the way they do and thus why they matter, is a huge part of then actually being motivated to do something about it. And let’s face it, a “yes, I will focus on my hydration” health kick is typically sustained for less time than many more noticeable (e.g. diet and exercise) healthy lifestyle adjustments, precisely because there’s less there to focus on so it gets forgotten.
The style is a little dated (the book is from 2003, and the style feels like it is from the 80s, which is when the author was doing most of his research, before launching his first book, which we haven’t read-and-reviewed yet, in 1992) but perfectly clear and pleasant to read.
Bottom line: this book may well get you to actually drink more water
Click here to check out Water: For Health, for Healing, for Life, and get hydrating!
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How To Avoid Slipping Into (Bad) Old Habits
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Treating Bad Habits Like Addictions
How often have you started a healthy new habit (including if it’s a “quit this previous thing” new habit), only to find that you slip back into your old ways?
We’ve written plenty on habit-forming before, so here’s a quick recap before we continue:
How To Really Pick Up (And Keep!) Those Habits
…and even how to give them a boost:
How To Keep On Keeping On… Long Term!
But how to avoid the relapses that are most likely to snowball?
Borrowing from the psychology of addiction recovery
It’s well known that someone recovering from substance addiction should not have even a small amount of the thing they were addicted to. Not one sip of champagne at a wedding, not one drag of a cigarette, and so forth.
This can go for other bad habits too; make one exception, and suddenly you have a whole string of “exceptions”, and before you know it, it’s not the exception anymore; it’s the new rule—again.
Three things that can help guard against this are:
- Absolutely refuse to romanticize the bad habit. Do not fall for its marketing! And yes, everything has marketing even if not advertising; for example, consider the Platonic ideal of a junk-food-eating couch-potato who is humble, unassuming, agreeable, the almost-holy idea of homely comfort, and why shouldn’t we be comfortable after all, haven’t we earned our chosen hedonism, and so on. It’s seductive, and we need to make the choice to not be seduced by it. In this case for example, yes pleasure is great, but being sick tired and destroying our bodies is not, in fact, pleasurable in the long run. Which brings us to…
- Absolutely refuse to forget why you dropped that behavior in the first place. Remember what it did to you, remember you at your worst. Remember what you feared might become of you if you continued like that. This is something where journaling helps, by the way; remembering our low points helps us to avoid finding ourselves in the same situation again.
- Absolutely refuse to let your guard down due to an overabundance of self-confidence in your future self. We all can easily feel that tomorrow is a mystical land in which all productivity is stored, and also where we are strong, energized, iron-willed, and totally able to avoid making the very mistakes that we are right now in the process of making. Instead, be that strong person now, for the benefit of tomorrow’s you. Because after all, if it’s going to be easy tomorrow, it’s easy now, right?
The above is a very simple, hopefully practical, set of rules to follow. If you like hard science more though, Yale’s Dr. Steven Melemis offers five rules (aimed more directly at addiction recovery, so this may be a big “heavy guns” for some milder habits):
- change your life
- be completely honest
- ask for help
- practice self-care
- don’t bend the rules
You can read his full paper and the studies it’s based on, here:
Relapse Prevention and the Five Rules of Recovery
“What if I already screwed up?”
Draw a line under it, now, and move forwards in the direction you actually want to go.
Here’s a good article, that saves us taking up more space here; it’s very well-written so we do recommend it:
The Abstinence Violation Effect and Overcoming It
this article gives specific, practical advices, including CBT tools to use
Take care!
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