How’s your heart?

If you have any leftover Valentine’s Day chocolate, first, congratulations (and how did you manage that?). If it’s dark chocolate, you can feel ever so slightly less guilty about indulging. There is some evidence that eating dark chocolate – “in moderation,” as they say – is good for your heart. That’s because dark chocolate has cocoa flavanols, which studies show can help reduce inflammation and lower blood pressure.

But – like everything that sounds too good to be true, there’s a “but” – there are lots of caveats. Those health benefits vanish when it comes to milk chocolate, which has few of the cocoa flavanols. (The darker the chocolate, the better – look for at least 70% cocoa.) And we’re talking about eating a square, not a bar – calories do matter, and too many will negate any heart-healthy benefits.

Looking for other ways to keep your heart healthy? Cardiologists from some of Georgia’s top hospitals and universities gave us a list of risk factors and what you can do about them in this month’s Georgia Trend. Read Beyond Heart-Health Basics to see what the experts in heart health advise.

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