You know that dreadful feeling you get when you come down with a cold? The achy muscles, the runny nose, the sneezing, and perhaps worst of all, the coughing.

Once you start coughing, doesn’t it feel like you’ll never stop? As you cough your life away, you probably start to feel sorry for yourself.

“I’m going to be coughing until I die!” you might think. “This cough syrup tastes horrible, and it doesn’t even work!”

Honestly, cough syrup does taste pretty bad. Wouldn’t it be better if we could just eat chocolate or something to cure our cough?

Of course, that could never happen. Or could it?

It sounds too good to be true, but one expert recently stated that “chocolate can calm coughs.”

Okay, he certainly has our attention!

The expert, and our new BFF, is Professor Alyn Morice, head of cardiovascular and respiratory studies at the University of Hull and founding member of the International Society for the Study of Cough.

Professor Morice has spent years researching the good old cough, so he knows his stuff, and we should probably trust him on this.

His conclusion came from a recent study that followed over 160 people who took chocolate-based medicine to help their coughs.

The patients in the study all saw significant improvements in their pesky cough in a matter of just two days after taking the medicine! The medicine used in the study is called Unicough, which contains cocoa.

“This proves that a new medicine which contains cocoa is better than a standard linctus,” Professor Morice says.

So what’s the deal? Is chocolate just magic? Why can something so delicious help something so dreadful?

Professor Morice says it has something to do with chocolate’s “demulcent” properties, meaning when you eat chocolate, it gets sticky and can adhere to the throat to soothe a throat and a cough, kind of in the same way other suppressants work.

“This demulcent effect explains why honey and lemon and other sugary syrups can help, but I think there is something more going on with chocolate,” Professor Morice said.

Well, we’re certainly willing to sign up for a study that allows us to eat chocolate when we’re sick! Sign us up!

So does this mean you can devour a Hershey’s bar when you’re sick and expect to feel better? Professor Morice says that while the stickiness could help you find relief temporarily, he does want to note that chocolate will work best in conjunction with medicine.

We don’t recommend devouring a whole bar of chocolate, which is definitely going to make your stomach turn, but a little piece isn’t going to hurt. In fact, it might even help!

Just some food for thought to keep in your back pocket next time you start hacking up a lung.

What do you think of this conclusion? Did you ever think that chocolate could help with a cough? What’s the weirdest thing you’ve ever eaten or done to help suppress a cough?