My chocolate trial
SUMMARY: I'm trying 45 grams/day of dark chocolate. Only on day 4, so too soon to be sure about causality; but it may be helping with mood, attention, orthostatic intolerance, and physical appearance.
DETAIL: Every morning, I eat 45 grams of vegan chocolate chips, 69% cacao. I eat no other chocolate.
Though it's too early to be sure that there's a causal link, I've noticed better mood, better attention, better physical stamina (in the sense that there's less orthostatic intolerance), a reduction in the recent flareup of a podgy look in my chest and belly (from inflammation?), and a nicer face (less of the inflammatory puffiness; smaller pores; color seems more even; usual dry patch isn't dry; and the two creases between my eyebrows are much less visible). My appetite for Coca-Cola is much less.
As for my attention: I've been able to watch a movie in chunks of about 20 to 30 minutes. Ever since I got CFS (5 years ago), my norm for movie-watching has been chunks of 3 to 5 minutes, 15 minutes if I'm lucky. (Before CFS, I could turn on Turner Classic Movies and watch three in a row.)
Orthostatic intolerance: I still spend a lot of time lying down—but, when I am sitting up or on my feet, there isn't nearly so much desire to get more horizontal. Just before writing this post, I spent a while washing dishes, and it didn't make me feel sick. Yesterday, I had a long shower—and afterward I kept on with my activities, instead of lying down feeling sick.
Why am I doing this? Until I started this experiment, it had become my norm not to eat much chocolate (I'd go many weeks without). Recently I had some at night, and got the sense that it was keeping me wide awake for many hours, in a way that p.m. coffee and Coke didn't. I looked it up, and read that it might be the theobromine in the chocolate, acting as a stimulant. I also had a feeling that, in the many hours after the chocolate, I was not as PEM-y as I should be after the day's errands. That got me curious about chocolate in CFS; I found "High Cocoa Polyphenol Rich Chocolate May Reduce the Burden of the Symptoms in Chronic Fatigue Syndrome" (https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3001690/pdf/1475-2891-9-55.pdf).
By the way, the study found that the chocolate was not associated with weight gain, despite the calories in it. The authors hypothesize that the increase in feeling energetic causes a compensatory increase in activity. I suspect that the subjects also, despite being told to maintain their diet, subconsciously made compensatory reductions because of the chocolate.
In case it matters: the chocolate chips are made by Enjoy Life, the Dark variety; the listed ingredients are unsweetened chocolate, cane sugar, cocoa butter; the 45 grams have 210 calories. I eat them in the morning, to keep them from messing up my sleep.
We'll see how it goes.