A study being presented today at the International Headache Congress meeting in Philadelphia suggests that chocolate might cure migraines.
The data comes from studies with rats, not from human subjects. Paul Durham, director of the Center for Biomedical and Life Sciences at Missouri State University, found that the anti-inflammatory properties of cocoa appeared to block pain in rats.
This information conflicts with the long-held belief that chocolate triggers migraines. Dr. Durham suggests that a craving for chocolate as part of the onset of a migraine could lead people to believe that the chocolate caused the migraine. This misleading anecdotal evidence could then persuade others that chocolate was a migraine trigger, when in fact a craving for chocolate might be the body's natural attempt to limit the pain of a migraine.
If chocolate can really cure headaches in humans, wouldn't we have noticed by now? After all, the average American eats twelve pounds of chocolate a year, the equivalent of about 110 Sweetique eggs.
The difficulty is that so many of the things that we identify as chocolate contain so little actual chocolate. The typical U.S.-made 1.5 oz candy bar has a thin coating of milk chocolate which is itself no more than 10% cocoa. A pre-migraine craving for chocolate satisfied with a candy bar will have gotten only the tiniest fraction of an ounce of cocoa -- not enough to treat the migraine, and certainly not enough to test the value of chocolate in treating migraines.
For that matter, it's not enough to test the idea that chocolate causes migraines. It's mostly just sugar.
So does chocolate cure headaches? Today's new study is just a preliminary hint that it might. We'll keep you posted.
