Category: Health

Eat More Chocolate!

More and more studies have been proving that chocolate is good for you! The key factor is the flavinoids found in the cocoa used to make chocolate. Flavinoid rich foods can help to lower the chance of developing heart disease and many forms of cancer! The darker the chocolate the more cocoa and thus the better it is for you.

One study showed that those with high blood pressure who ate 3.5-ounces of dark chocolate daily for 15 days were rewarded with lower blood pressure, lower cholesterol, and improved sugar metabolism. It has also shown to increase serotonin production in the brain which is essentially a chemical that controls happiness. So this means that chocolate can make you feel happy, lower your risk of many diseases and also just tastes amazing! What are the odds of that?

Dead Smokers?

The Mail & Guardian is reporting that a study by Curtin University in Western Australia suggests that smokers won’t exists by 2030. That is, of course, using stats that are available today to predict the future. There will be no women smokers in Australia in the year 2029 with males slow to give up the habit by a full year.

Australia currently has the lowest smoking rates in the industrialized world with 17.4% of the population smoking.

Cancer Man Dies

How is a person dying a good thing? I’ve suggested before that when someone ceases to exist on our planet Earth that we use that time to celebrate the person’s live.

A British man, Sir Richard Doll, whose research linked smoking to cancer in the 1940s died on July 24th. His research into smoking and lung cancer seem obvious to us now, but back then the idea wasn’t widely accepted.

I think it is worth remembering that research that might seem “a little out there” can actually be true. For instance, genetically modified foods are still under-tested in the majority of the world and as a result we may be eating many carcinogens. It takes hard work and research done by people like Doll to challenge the status-quo and provide inertia for change.

Smog is another example; lots of research has proven that smog kills and kills and kills. It unfortunately takes time for governments – and people – to react, but we need to remember that life is short (shorter if you smoke) and we need to collectively take action to make the world a healthier, and happier, place to live.