5:46pm Wednesday 3rd October 2007
By Nicola Fifield
A DAILY dose of dark chocolate may help cut chronic fatigue symptoms, according to ground-breaking research by York boffins.
Patients in a pilot study found they had less fatigue when eating 45g of a specially formulated dark chocolate bar each day.
Two patients felt so much better that after two months of eating dark chocolate daily, they were able to return to work after six months of sick leave.
But chocolholics be warned - because patients also reported feeling more fatigue when they switched to a daily dose of white chocolate, which contains no cocoa solids.
Duane Mellor, of the Hull York Medical School, said the results were extremely exciting.
He said: "The idea for the study came from a patient who said they felt a lot better when they had dark chocolate and a lot worse when they had white chocolate. We decided to see if other patients would benefit and carried out a trial of ten patients who recieved three 15g bars of specially-formulated dark chocolate containing 85 per cent of cocoa solids.
"They ate this for two months, had a one-month break, then had another two months eating white chocolate dyed brown."
Only five patients completed the study - with four dropping out because they felt so much worse when eating the white chocolate.
Nobody put on any weight while eating the daily dose of dark chocolate.
Mr Mellor said they did not know why dark chocolate reduced fatigue, but said it could be down to chemicals that increase levels of serotonin in the brain.
He said: "Serotonin has been linked to creating a feeling of well-being and energy."
Heather Walker, from Action for ME, said the charity was sceptical about the findings.
She said: "Wouldn't it be wonderful if eating chocolate every day could alleviate the symptoms of chronic illness?
"If it were that easy, there would not be 250,000 people in the UK today whose lives are being been devastated by ME."
The Hull York Medical School is now looking into whether dark chocolate could be beneficial to patients suffering from type two diabetes.
The researchers were keen to stress that the chocolate formation used in the study was not currently available to the public.
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