Daily use of only a few pieces of dark chocolate can significantly reduce the risk of hemorrhagic stroke, researchers say.

Stroke - a disease that takes hundreds of millions of lives each year. Strokes are of two kinds: hemorrhagic - when blood from a burst vessel gets into the brain tissue, coagulates and disrupts its work, and ischemic ones - when the lumen of the blood vessel feeding the brain tissue turns out to be clogged (completely or partially) by sclerotic plaques. The first, according to statistics, make up about 20% of the total number of strokes, the latter - up to 80%.

A group of American scientists from the medical clinic at Harvard University found that only a few pieces of dark chocolate eaten throughout the day, with regular use significantly reduce the risk of hemorrhagic stroke.

Scientists summarized the observation data for 4,369 French middle-aged women. The study began in 1993.

When the researchers compared the diets of all the participants in the experiment, the calculations made it possible to establish that women who consumed more than 9 grams of chocolate daily were 52% less likely to develop a stroke than those who ate less than 0.1 grams of goodies per day.

Medical scientists attribute this phenomenon to the beneficial properties of cocoa fruits, which are used in considerable quantities for making dark chocolate. There are probably several possible mechanisms, but most likely the substances contained in cocoa have a positive effect on blood pressure, and also improve the elasticity of the walls of blood vessels, experts believe..

Medicinform. Net.