Heart palpitations with dark chocolate

#1

Does anyone else get heart palpitations/racing heart after 90% dark chocolate? What ingredient/s could be causing this? Caffeine, theobromine, etc? Otherwise my diet is almost 100% animal-based.

#2

I get this. It’s not a one-to-one correlation but it was close enough that I finally cut out my (beloved) dark chocolate. There were other reasons, but that one was high on the list. I’m very sensitive to caffeine but I think I came to the conclusion that it was something else in the chocolate that caused my heart-racing.

(John) #3

I eat 100% dark chocolate. I have never had any reaction to it.

(Carl Keller) #4

Probably one or both of those.

Theobromine, an ingredient commonly found in chocolate, can also increase your heart rate and cause palpitations.

(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #5

They are both stimulants, so yeah.

Caffeine and theobromine belong to a class of chemicals called methylxanthines, which are stimulants and bronchodilators. So if it wasn’t the caffeine, it was the theobromine. I don’t know anything else in chocolate that would do it, unless the increased heart rate was an idiosyncratic allergic reaction, in which case it could be anything in the chocolate. (My mother’s allergist had a patient once whose reaction to caffeine was to weep and tell people her problems. Mom’s reaction to milk was an ache in her bones.)

#6

Thank you, Paul! Also, that’s so odd about the caffeine/crying reaction. So many possibilities in these complex bodies of ours…

#7

Hey! I have started the low-carb diet too 3 months ago, but started to include 90% dark chocolate in my diet around 6 weeks ago - eating 7 squares daily spread over breakfast, lunch & dinner. I have noticed I have very high resting heart rate around 100-120 bpm & strongly suspect a link to the dark chocolate. I have stopped eating the dark chocolate since yesterday. Have you stopped consuming the dark chocolate? And are you still getting heart palpitations? Thanks for any input!

#8

Hi Madeleine,

I’m getting the same heart rate problems now most likely due to the dark chocolate. How long it took for you for the heart palpitations to stop after you cut out the dark chocolate from your diet?

(Katie) #9

I have increased heart rate with just 100% cocoa powder, so my guess it is the cocoa itself, and not the other ingredients in the chocolate.

#10

It resolves the night after my first day without dark chocolate.

#11

Thinking about it now, I noticed the same thing when I used to drink milk with cocoa powder before I moved to <20g carbs/day. At the time I’d put it down to the dairy, but maybe it was the cocoa :thinking:

(Katie) #12

I thought about it maybe being the caffeine in the cocoa powder, but I drink so much coffee that the amount in the little portion of cocoa powder I had probably would not affect me the way it did.