Dark chocolate consumption linked to better eye health

Dark chocolate could be beneficial for eyesight. That is the conclusion reached by a group of Italian researchers who said that this sweet could, among other things, help fight eye diseases.

Published in the journal Nature, the study claims that, with just three ounces of a standard bar of dark chocolate, humans could have better eyesight since this sweet helps the correct function of blood vessels, essential for not only healthy, but also clear vision, as detailed by researcher Giuseppe Querques.

The professor of Ophthalmology at Università Vita-Salute San Raffaele in Milan is one of the authors of the study and spoke to The Epoch Times on the benefits of dark chocolate, explaining that what surprised him most is the small amount that needs to be ingested to begin to notice its effect:

"The most surprising thing was that a relatively small dose of dark chocolate can modify the motility and dilation of retinal vessels."Giuseppe Querques, professor of Ophthalmology at the Università Vita-Salute San Raffaele in Milan.

As the expert explained to the American media, this discovery could be important because "it opens up an important scenario on the potential use of cocoa in the prevention of retinal diseases and its possible systemic effects."

Specifically, Querques and his team did a test on 20 healthy adults, with an average age of 24 years. They were given 20 grams of dark chocolate or 7.5 grams of milk chocolate. After two hours they began to do analyses and found that those who had ingested the dark chocolate had expanded retinal blood flow by 4% while those who took the same amount but of milk chocolate increased by only 2.75%.

An increase that, Querques explained, could be due to the fact that chocolate increases the amount of nitrous oxide in the body and that comes to prove the previous hypotheses.

"Our study is only the first to demonstrate the effect of cocoa on retinal vessels," Querques clarified, referring to other 2018 research that hypothesized but failed to test the hypothesis.

A finding that, although important, is only limited to the regulation of blood vessels in the retinas in the short term, so, Querques says, it would still have to be determined whether it is also beneficial for eyesight in the long term.