Study: Chocolate is Good for Your Heart

A small piece of chocolate isn’t so bad for you once in awhile.

FOX’s Alex Hein explains:

This is Housecall for Health.

While so-called choc-o-holics may have gotten a bad rap over the years, a new study has found that eating a small amount of chocolate every week or so may decrease your risk of developing a serious type of irregular heart rhythm.

AFib is a quivering or irregular heartbeat that can lead to blood clots, stroke, heart failure and other heart-related complications.

In this case, researchers used data collected for a long term study of people in Denmark. Based on their data, about 3,300 cases of AFib occurred over an average of 13 years.

Those who ate one serving, which is about one ounce of chocolate per week, were 17 percent less likely to be diagnosed with AFib than those who don’t eat chocolate at all.

Those who ate two to six ounces were week were less likely to be diagnosed with AFib, while those who ate more than once once per day were 16 percent less likely to have the condition.

For more on this story, check FOXNewsHealth.com.

Housecall for Health, I’m Alex Hein, FOX News.

Follow Alex Hein on Twitter: @Ahlex3889