It’s fair to suggest that there are many people around who enjoy eating chocolate from time to time! It’s a type of confectionary that often evokes unadulterated delight in people of all ages, and can often be a primary source of comfort-eating.
For those who enjoy eating chocolate, recent studies which reveal that chocolate can help to improve mood and reduce proneness to depression is likely to be rapturously-received; and this is exactly what a study conducted at the Black Dog Institute in Sydney has concluded.
The researchers on the project sought to investigate the relationship between chocolate cravings, personality-type and atypical depressive-symptoms. The researchers surveyed 3,000 depressed people using web-based questionnaires, and discovered that those who suffered from atypical forms of depression were more likely to crave chocolate. The tendency for women to crave it more than depressed men, also suggested that there may be some hormonal determinant within depression that creates a craving for chocolate.
Atypical depression is considered by mental-health experts to be the most common form of depression – with those who suffer from it being able to respond to positive events in their lives, in a manner that those who suffer from melancholic depression sometimes cannot. In the study, those with atypical depression were more likely to crave chocolate and it also had a positive impact upon stress, anxiety and irritability. A person suffering from atypical depression will experience a reversed vegetative-state causing them to over-eat and over-sleep, whereas a person suffering from melancholic depression will lose their appetite and suffer from insomnia.
Some scientists assert that this may be partly attributed to thyroid regulation issues that arise when a person suffers from atypical depression. In such cases, certain mineral supplements, including chromium picolinate can reduce cravings, stopping people from reaching for chocolate bars when they feel depressed.
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