When you're feeling nervous, restless or stressed, eating dark chocolate helps you relax , according to a study from Swinburne University of Technology in Australia. The researchers, led by Matthew Pase, attribute this calming property to the polyphenols in cocoa.
As explained in the journal Journal of Psychopharmacology , to test the properties of cocoa they worked with more than seventy healthy individuals to whom they randomly administered a dark chocolate drink with three variants: 500 milligrams of cocoa polyphenols, 250 milligrams and 0 milligrams, respectively. After thirty days, the individuals who had consumed higher doses of the polyphenols from chocolate (500 milligrams per day) were more calm, relaxed and satisfied than the rest. However, according to the study authors, the drink had no effect on the participants' cognitive performance .
