Wow, that is like music to a woman’s ears!! Chocolate can actually help with pregnancy!!!

New research performed at Yale University suggests that including dark chocolate in your diet may prevent pregnancy complications such as preeclampsia.

There is a chemical in dark chocolate called ‘theobromine’, which stimulates the heart, relaxes smooth muscles and dilates blood vessels and has been used for those suffering from chest pain, high blood pressure and hardening of the arteries.

During pregnancy, blood pressure spikes causing preeclampsia, also causing protein to spill into the urine. Many of the characteristics are common to heart disease, research has shown.

A study was performed with over 2,000 women who had delivered a single infant and were asked how much dark chocolate they had consumed in their first and third trimesters. The blood levels were tested for theobromine in the infant’s umbilical cord blood.

Women who consumed large levels of dark chocolate during their pregnancy showed elevated levels of theobromine in their infant’s blood and were at lower risk of developing preeclampsia.

These results raised the possibility that dark chocolate consumption during pregnancy may reduce the development of preeclampsia.

This is another good reason to add dark chocolate to our daily diets!!

Until next time,

~Dr. Mommy