Phil Thien
03-22-2013, 12:49 PM
I'm recovering from another fight with a virus that left me with a dry, hacking cough.
I've visited my doctor for this in the past, he always prescribes "purple drank," which is the street name for cough medicine with codeine. It works okay, but I'm not thrilled with taking all that codeine. Or going to the doctor because I have a cough.
I had a couple of years ago found some links to studies that indicated that theobromine (found in chocolate) has a greater antitussive effect than codeine. One study I found indicated that 300 (or was it 500) mg of theobromine was enough to sooth the vagus nerve.
I tried eating dark chocolate and it did have a very calming effect.
The question was always, how much chocolate do I need to get to 300 (or 500) mg of theobromine. I want to stop the cough, and not get any fatter.
I have found Godiva bars that are 85% cacao. That is a pretty dark chocolate bar. They don't taste great, but I'm not doing this for the taste.
So I called Godiva and asked, "do you guys have any idea how much theobromine is in a 1-oz serving of your 85% cacao bar?"
She came back with "that is like a chemistry question." ["Like, nobody told me I'd have to answer chemistry questions when I applied for this job."]
They didn't have that information, she said.
I did some more googling and found a link to theobromine content in Hershey's products at the Hershey site, but the links were dead. So I called Hershey's, and they were on their game. 41 grams of "Special Dark" contains 179 mg of theobromine, I was told. He said he'd let them (IT guys) know about the dead links.
I did even more googling and found this site with nutritional data including theobromine content:
http://nutritiondata.self.com
This link ranks foods by content of theobromine:
http://nutritiondata.self.com/foods-000132000000000000000-1.html?
Using the data on that page, I was able to determine that each ounce of milk chocolate contains about 57mg of theobromine. Way too low for a therapeutic effect.
Each ounce of chocolate with 45-59% cacao solids contains approx. 138mg of theobromine. (This roughly matches what the Hershey's gentleman told me on the content in their "Special Dark" bar, encouraging).
For bars with 60-69% cacao, the theobromine content is 177mg per ounce (approx.).
And for bars with 70-85% cacao, the theobromine content is 225mg/ounce (again, approx.).
The theobromine "half-life" in your system is apparently approx. 12 hours. So if you get 225mg, in 12 hours you will still have half that amount.
So don't go nuts. There is such a thing as theobromine poisoning.
And theobromine is very toxic to animals (dogs, etc.). Make sure your dogs don't get chocolate.
But I just thought I'd pass this along here in case anyone else ever suffers from an uncontrollable cough and is looking for an inexpensive, very effective remedy.
I've visited my doctor for this in the past, he always prescribes "purple drank," which is the street name for cough medicine with codeine. It works okay, but I'm not thrilled with taking all that codeine. Or going to the doctor because I have a cough.
I had a couple of years ago found some links to studies that indicated that theobromine (found in chocolate) has a greater antitussive effect than codeine. One study I found indicated that 300 (or was it 500) mg of theobromine was enough to sooth the vagus nerve.
I tried eating dark chocolate and it did have a very calming effect.
The question was always, how much chocolate do I need to get to 300 (or 500) mg of theobromine. I want to stop the cough, and not get any fatter.
I have found Godiva bars that are 85% cacao. That is a pretty dark chocolate bar. They don't taste great, but I'm not doing this for the taste.
So I called Godiva and asked, "do you guys have any idea how much theobromine is in a 1-oz serving of your 85% cacao bar?"
She came back with "that is like a chemistry question." ["Like, nobody told me I'd have to answer chemistry questions when I applied for this job."]
They didn't have that information, she said.
I did some more googling and found a link to theobromine content in Hershey's products at the Hershey site, but the links were dead. So I called Hershey's, and they were on their game. 41 grams of "Special Dark" contains 179 mg of theobromine, I was told. He said he'd let them (IT guys) know about the dead links.
I did even more googling and found this site with nutritional data including theobromine content:
http://nutritiondata.self.com
This link ranks foods by content of theobromine:
http://nutritiondata.self.com/foods-000132000000000000000-1.html?
Using the data on that page, I was able to determine that each ounce of milk chocolate contains about 57mg of theobromine. Way too low for a therapeutic effect.
Each ounce of chocolate with 45-59% cacao solids contains approx. 138mg of theobromine. (This roughly matches what the Hershey's gentleman told me on the content in their "Special Dark" bar, encouraging).
For bars with 60-69% cacao, the theobromine content is 177mg per ounce (approx.).
And for bars with 70-85% cacao, the theobromine content is 225mg/ounce (again, approx.).
The theobromine "half-life" in your system is apparently approx. 12 hours. So if you get 225mg, in 12 hours you will still have half that amount.
So don't go nuts. There is such a thing as theobromine poisoning.
And theobromine is very toxic to animals (dogs, etc.). Make sure your dogs don't get chocolate.
But I just thought I'd pass this along here in case anyone else ever suffers from an uncontrollable cough and is looking for an inexpensive, very effective remedy.