BehindTheMedspeak: Chocolate is the world's best cough medicine

Yes, even better than codeine, until now the gold standard for antitussives.

Ooh, that's a good one, huh?

Yes - it will be on the SAT.

Add it to your armamentarium: you don't have to tell where you got it, y'know.

I'm into giving away all the credit and power and ideas I can.

So un-American, I know, but hey, that's the way I'm wired.

Anyone who wants control or power over another human being should be confined.

But I digress.

Back to chocolate.

Dr. Peter J. Barnes and colleagues, out of Britain's National Heart and Lung Institute, reported in the November 17 online issue of the journal of the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology

that the active ingredient in chocolate -

theobromine - works in an unexpected way to suppress coughing.

Codeine and other opiates (morphine, fentanyl, and their ilk) act in the brain, reducing activity in its so-called "cough center."

Theobromine, in contrast, acts peripherally in the lungs, suppressing the firing of nerve fibers there that send signals to the cough center.

In the study, 10 healthy volunteers were given theobromine, codeine, or a placebo during a series of tests.

The scientists then used capsaicin (the chemical in hot peppers) to provoke coughing.

It took about 33% more capsaicin to set off coughs after the subjects had taken theobromine compared with a placebo.

Codeine, in contrast, was only slightly more effective than the placebo.

You can't buy theobromine in the pill form used in the study.

The only place you can find it is in chocolate.

The dose of theobromine used in the study was equivalent to that found in seven ounces of dark chocolate.

I don't know about you, but I can eat a half pound of superb chocolate quite easily, even when I'm not coughing.

I'll tell you what: the next time I start hacking and all, I'm heading for the Callebaut section of my local upscale market.

Unless I'm in the mood for Valrhona.

Yes, more and more of my readers are native speakers of languages other than English.

So more and more I'm going to offer links in other languages.

I'll still take pity on Anglophones, however.

Here's the English version of the Callebaut website, and this will take you to Valrhona's.

Gringo.