sweet dreams are made of this

Those of you who come back to read this weblog on a regular basis know that I am always looking for tips to make us all more healthy. One theme that keeps coming up is that cocoa and chocolate are about the best thing you can eat if you want to stay healthy. Here is the latest I read today.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060227/ap_on_he_me/diet_chocolate_health

Now, those of you who know Jimbo, know that he has a history of high blood pressure and he takes an assortment of medications to keep that hypertension under control. Now it seems, Jimbo has been swallowing the wrong stuff. Had he kept a steady diet of chocolate, he would probably have such low blood pressure that people would misidentify him as someone who is laid back.

It seems the magic ingredient in chocolate is called flavanols, and whatever flavanols are—they sound flavorful, don’t they—they increase nitric oxide in the blood, and I guess that’s good.

Damn! Life is full of missed opportunities. While I was typing the paragraph before last, Jimbo’s girlfriend called from the supermarket. She has to wait at the pharmacy there for twenty minutes to get a prescription filled. She asked if there was anything I needed. I could have had her fill a shopping cart with chocolate candy and get some cocoa mix and bring it home to me. Maybe she could have gotten some cookies, too. You know, the ones with chocolate all over the outside, or maybe some chocolate chip cookies.

And when she got home from the store, I could have had her open the candy and pour it in a large bowl and put it on the kitchen table. I could just bury my face in all that chocolate in the bowl and eat it like a dog would, without using my hands. In just a short while I would be able to feel that chocolate coursing through my veins like a very healthy screaming brakeman, on the railroad to good health. I’d have so much nitric oxide flowing through me that high blood pressure would simply be an unpleasant memory.

You know, I’ll bet the cost of that chocolate could be considered a tax deduction—right up there on the top of Schedule A of form 1040. In that case chocolate could make us healthy, wealthy and wise. Okay, healthy and wealthy, anyway.

I don’t know about you, but I think I need to get downstairs right away and see if we have any chocolate in the house. Maybe the rest of you should follow my lead. Because we never can be too healthy.

At least that is our mantra, here in Jimbo’s world.