How Can I Stop Craving For Chocolate?

Almost everyone gets the urge for chocolate now and then.?If your chocolate cravings are constantly causing you to break your diet, though, you may be wondering how you can get them to just stop.?For some, wanting to eat chocolate goes beyond simply linking the taste.?The desire for chocolate is complex, though, so if you have chocolate cravings you must delve deep to find the root cause.?There might even be more than one reason that you crave it.

A Biological Need

First of all, biologists theorize that humans crave sweets in general because our ancestors who had a sweet tooth would have sought out natural sources of sugar, like fruits.?Fruits offer many antioxidant vitamins that your body needs, so a craving for sweets might actually be a craving for vitamins. If chocolate is the sweet on hand, though, you might grab that rather than an apple.?Make sure that you have plenty of fruit on hand and that you supplement your vitamin intake with a multivitamin.?For some people, this can stop the cravings for chocolate and candy in general.

The Drug Addiction Factor

Sometimes, though, the craving for chocolate is not just a craving for sweets in general.?It has something to do with the specific components of chocolate.?Chocolate contains some addictive substances.?The most well-known one is caffeine.?Another less well-known chemical called theobromine is more abundant in chocolate and not found very readily in other foods.?This substance is not only a mental stimulant, it is also a muscle relaxant.?In addition, some researchers think that the chemical anandamide found is chocolate?has much the same affect on the body as the drug in marijuana.?The typical amount of chocolate consumed by one person will not be enough to be noticeably impaired, but drugs in even small doses can lead to a small high and have addictive properties.?For some, it could be the combination of caffeine, theobromine, and anandamide that keeps them coming back for more and more chocolate.?In this case, chocolate cravings should be treated as a type of drug addiction, and can therefore be stopped with treatments similar to other addictions.

New Clues in Current Research

Additionally, recent research has found that chocolate cravings are correlated to having certain helpful bacteria living in your stomach.?This could lead to treatments in the future that would change the composition of bacteria that live in your body and possibly reduce chocolate cravings.?There is no current treatment plan based on this new research.?/p>

Finding What Works for You

As with all new research it should be taken with a grain of salt, or maybe with a bite of chocolate.?In the end, what matters is what works for you.?If you think that chocolate cravings are ruining your health, make sure to get enough overall nutrition and consult with your physician about possible causes.