It turns out that chocolate-especially dark chocolate-reduces body mass, prevents blood clots, improves numeracy, may prevent cancer, and doesn’t ruin your complexion.

A new study suggests that eating chocolate can help you stay thin. Researchers at the University of California-San Diego found that people who frequently eat chocolate have lower body-mass indexes than people who don’t. Other evidence indicates that chocolate can also ward off strokes, heart attacks, and diabetes. So here are 11 reasons to indulge in some s’mores this summer (no word yet on the health benefits of marshmallows) …

1. Chocolate decreases stroke risk

A Swedish study found that eating more than 45 grams of chocolate per week-about two bars worth-led to a 20 percent decrease in stroke risk among women. Chocolate contains flavonoids, whose antioxidant properties help fight strokes, the study’s author, Susanna Larsson, told HealthDay.

2. Chocolate reduces the likelihood of a heart attack

Other studies show that eating chocolate prevents blood clots, which in turn reduces the risk of heart attacks. Blood platelets clump together more slowly in chocolate eaters, the studies say.

3. Chocolate protects against blood inflammation

Eat one Hershey’s dark chocolate bar per week, and your risk of heart disease will decrease, a 2008 study found. About 6.7 grams of dark chocolate per day keeps the blood inflammation-inducing proteins away. Just like your mother always told you.

4. Chocolate helps with math

British psychologists found that flavanols (a class of flavonoids, which are found in chocolate) helped people with their mental math. Study subjects had an easier time counting backwards from a randomly-generated number between 800 and 999 after drinking a cup of hot chocolate than they did without the cocoa. “The findings suggest students who binge on chocolate when revising for exams may gain a real benefit from doing so,” the British Telegraph reported.

5. Chocolate may prevent cancer

Cocoa contains a compound called pentameric procyanidin, or pentamer, which disrupts cancer cells’ ability to spread. When researchers from the Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center at Georgetown University treated cancer cells with pentamer back in 2005, the proteins necessary for cancer growth were suppressed and the cells stopped dividing.

6. Chocolate reduces the risk of diabetes

The Italians know a thing or two about good eating.And a small study from the University of L'Aquila, in Italy, found that eating chocolate increases insulin sensitivity, which reduces the risk of diabetes.

7. Chocolate is good for your skin

“Some people say that I eat too many chocolate bars …” Remember that acne infomercial from the 90s? No? Well, it doesn’t matter. Not only does it not cause breakouts, it’s actually good for your skin! (Well, dark chocolate at least.) Flavonoids found in dark chocolate protect women’s skin from the sun’s UV rays, according to German scientists. But that doesn’t mean you can skip the sunscreen.

8. Chocolate can control coughs

The most delicious way to kick your cough, apparently, is chocolate. One of the sweet’s chemical components, theobromine, seems to reduce the activity of the vagus nerve, the part of the brain that triggers coughing fits. Scientists are even working on a cough-quelling drug that uses theobromine in place of codeine—a narcotic common in cough medicine.

9. Chocolate improves blood flow

In 2008 Harvard scientists forced test subjects to undergo “two weeks of enhanced chocolate intake.” A fortnight of chocolate face-stuffing, they found, sped up blood flow through their subject’s middle cerebral arteries. In other words, more chocolate means more blood to your brain.

10. Chocolate strengthens your brain

Researchers at  the Johns Hopkins University found that dark chocolate shields cells in your brain, and accordingly protects it from damage caused by stroke. Epicatechin, a compound found in chocolate, significantly reduced the brain damage in mice who suffered strokes, they found. Scientists at California's Salk Institute also found that epicatechin improved mice’s memories.

11. Chocolate makes you live longer

Jeanne Louise Calment lived to the age of 122—the oldest anyone has ever lived. She ate two and a half pounds of dark chocolate per week. Harvard researchers found that eating chocolate actually adds two years to your life expectancy.

But don’t just start binging on chocolate! Most of the chocolate you buy in the grocery store is heavily processed, which means that it has lost many of its healthy chemicals. And some of the research supporting chocolate’s healthy characteristics was paid for by chocolate manufacturers.

Here's one equation that leaders can't forget: happy employees = productive employees. Open Forum offers seven easy ways to keep your employees feeling happy and appreciated. For example:

• Recognize when employees are making progress. Pause and highlight milestones that people hit or challenges they have overcome. Ensure that people feel their contributions are rewarded by simply saying "thank you."


• Make employees feel like they belong. To be happy at work, it’s important to feel like “you have a friend.” This gets challenging especially when the company gets busy. People need to feel like they know each other and so time like this yields positive results.

Sleep breathing problems linked with depression

Experiencing breathing problems during sleep may raise your risk of depression, a new study suggests.

Women with sleep apnea, in which breathing becomes shallow or pauses briefly during sleep, were 5.2 times as likely to have depression compared with women without the condition. Men with sleep apnea were 2.4 times as likely to have depression as men without the condition, according to the study from researchers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Participants in the study who had other breathing problems during sleep also had an increased risk of depression. However, the researchers found no increased likelihood of depression among people who snore.

"Snorting, gasping or stopping breathing while asleep was associated with nearly all depression symptoms, including feeling hopeless and feeling like a failure," said study researcher Anne Wheaton, an epidemiologist with the CDC. "We expected persons with sleep-disordered breathing to report trouble sleeping or sleeping too much, or feeling tired and having little energy, but not the other symptoms."

Both depression and breathing problems during sleep are common, and both are underdiagnosed, the researchers wrote. Screening people who have for one disorder for the other could lead to better diagnosis and treatments, they said.

The researchers took into account other factors that might influence the results, such as age, sex and weight. The results are in line with those of the other studies, the researchers said.

The study found an association, not a cause-and-effect link. However, the researchers wrote that evidence from other research suggests that breathing problems during sleep may contribute to the development of depression. For example, one previous study found a link between the severity of breathing problems during sleep and the odds of later developing depression. And other studies have shown that people who received treatment for sleep apnea showed improvement in their depression.

"Mental health professionals often ask about certain sleep problems, such as unrefreshing sleep and insomnia, but likely do not realize that [breathing problems during sleep] may have an impact on their patients' mental health," the researchers wrote in their conclusion.

Although exactly how the link might work is unclear, it could partly be explained by the fact that people with breathing problems experience sleep that is fragmented, or may have low levels of oxygen in the blood during sleep.

The researchers used data collected from 9,714 adults who participated in the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, which is an ongoing study conducted by the CDC.

Participants were considered to have depression based on their answers to a questionnaire asking about how often they experienced symptoms of depression.

Six percent of men and 3 percent of women in the study reported having physician-diagnosed sleep apnea.

The study was limited in that participants' depression and sleep problems were measured at only one point in time, and in that it relied on self-reported symptoms. People may not be aware they have breathing problems during sleep, and there was no information about whether participants were being treated for depression.

While effective at killing cancer cells, chemotherapy is currently a shotgun approach that can also harm healthy cells and cause serious side effects in patients. The ability to deliver drugs directly into cancer cells would provide a more targeted approach to more effectively treat the disease with lower doses of drugs and less side effects. Researchers at Northwestern University are claiming to be the first to develop gold nanostars that provide a much more precise approach by delivering a drug directly to a cancer cell’s nucleus.

The nanoparticles developed at Northewestern are spiky gold nanostars measuring approximately 25 nanometers wide with five to 10 points. This shape has dual advantages. Not only does it provide a large surface area on which a high concentration of drug molecules can be loaded so less drug would be required than current approaches, but it also changes the shape of the cancer cell nucleus, which improves the effectiveness of the drug release.

In their study of human cervical and ovarian cancer cells, the scientists coated gold nanostars in a single-stranded DNA aptamer. This molecule is attracted to and binds to a protein called nucleolin, which is overexpressed in cancer cells and found within and on the surface of the cell. When released from the nanostar, the DNA aptamer also acts as the drug itself.

Taking advantage of nucleolin’s role as a shuttle within the cancer cell, the gold nanostars hitch a ride to the cell’s nucleus. Once there, the bond attachments between the gold surface and the DNA aptamers are severed by directing ultrafast pulses of light at the cells and the aptamers enter the cell nucleus. Because the gold nanostar doesn’t actually need to pass through the nuclear membrane to deliver the drug, it doesn’t need to be a certain size.

“Our drug-loaded gold nanostars are tiny hitchhikers,” said Teri W. Odom, who led the study. “They are attracted to a protein on the cancer cell’s surface that conveniently shuttles the nanostars to the cell’s nucleus. Then, on the nucleus’ doorstep, the nanostars release the drug, which continues into the nucleus to do its work.”

Using electron microscopy, the scientists found that the gold nanostars deformed the smooth ellipsoid shape of the cancer cell nucleus into an uneven shape with deep folds. Release of the drug at the points of the nanostar occurs easily because the nanostar’s shape also concentrates the ultrafast light pulses at those points.

Because the light source triggering the drug release would be external to the body, the technique would be limited to tumors fairly close to the surface of the skin, such as skin and some breast cancers. Odom says surgeons removing tumors could also use the gold nanostars to deal with any stray cancer cells in surrounding tissue.

Since their initial research on human cervical and ovarian cancer cells, the team has studied the effects of the drug-loaded gold nanostars on 12 other human cancer cell lines and witnessed similar results.

“All cancer cells seem to respond similarly,” Odom said. “This suggests that the shuttling capabilities of the nucleolin protein for functionalized nanoparticles could be a general strategy for nuclear-targeted drug delivery.”