Sandhya Raghavan
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Written By: Sandhya Raghavan | Updated : October 6, 2017 7:39 PM IST
Apparently, dark chocolate is so good for you that merely sniffing them can do wonders for your waistline; bizarre but true. Health experts have been harping about the benefits of dark chocolates for a long time. Some of those health benefits also included weight loss, giving chocoholics the perfect excuse indulge in their favourite treat. Experts said that sugar in the chocolate, not the chocolate, was responsible for all the weight gain. Chocolate on its own could work a lot of miracles, including improving metabolism, supplying antioxidants and enhancing an overall sense of well-being. After all the years of bad press, even milk chocolate got its well deserved due.
But the virtues of dark chocolate go beyond that. It's not mandatory to eat them just to reap its health benefits because smelling them would work just as well. Here's the science part of it. Ghrelin, a gastrointestinal hormone, stimulates your appetite and signals to your brain that you are hungry. Researchers in 2010 conducted a health experiment to check whether dark chocolate has an influence on the hunger hormone. Twelve women whose BMI was between 18 and 25 were given 30 gm of 85 percent dark chocolate to either eat or to smell. Amazingly, all the women reported a decrease in their appetite and reduced cravings after having eaten and sniffed the chocolate. Researchers say that smelling the chocolate caused a decrease in the ghrelin in the system. When the hunger hormone levels go down in the body, appetite gets suppressed and cravings disappear.
The prospects of weight loss should excite choco-lovers even more. So, head out to your nearest supermarket and get a bar of dark chocolate, preferably 85 percent or above and have a sniff to quell cravings. And don't worry about losing self-control and demolishing the bar while smelling it. We all know that eating dark chocolate can be good for health.
(Read: Weight loss tip #185 Eat with a man to lose weight)
Read this in Hindi.
References:
Massolt ET, van Haard PM, Rehfeld JF, Posthuma EF, van der Veer E, Schweitzer DH. Appetite suppression through smelling of dark chocolate correlates with changes in ghrelin in young women. Regul Pept. 2010 Apr 9;161(1-3):81-6. doi: 10.1016/j.regpep.2010.01.005. Epub 2010 Jan 25. PubMed PMID: 20102728.
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