Dark Chocolate Relieves Pre-eclampsia:

Give Happier Babies

Pre-eclampsia is one of the causes of premature labor and is characterized by high blood pressure and protein levels in your urine during pregnancy. When the blood pressure increases, it leads to convulsions and may also cause blood clotting and liver damage.

Research findings in the New Scientist Magazine state that pregnant women who had more dark chocolate gave birth to happier and livelier babies. Researchers randomly picked a few mothers who had six-month-old babies and asked them how frequently they had chocolate in their pregnancy. They were told to rate their babies’ happiness. Mothers who frequently had chocolate in their pregnancy gave higher happiness scores to their babies than mothers who did not have chocolate regularly.

However, the exact reason is not known – it may be the chocolate passing through the placenta into the breast milk or mother’s enhanced happiness from chocolate that made the babies happy.

Another interesting finding from the study was that it protected babies from maternal stress. Mothers who never ate chocolate showed high stress levels during pregnancy and had babies who were fearful. Mothers who ate chocolate showed low stress levels and had babies who were less fearful.