Background: Menstrual pain can be severe enough to interfere with everyday activities for a few day every month, particualrly in activities in homes and schools for late adolescents. Dark chocolate is considered effective in reducing menstrual pain. However, little is known about its effect.Objective: This study aimed to examine the effect of dark chocolate on menstrual pain in late adolescents.Methods: This was a true experiment study with randomized pretest-posttest with control group design. This study was conducted from September to November 2016 at the Bhakti Husada Boarding School of Poltekkes Kemenkes Semarang. There were 50 samples recruited by simple random sampling, with 25 randomly assigned to the experiment and control group. Numeric Rate Scale (NRS) was used to measure pain. Independent t-test and Mann-whitney were used to examine the effect of intervention. Results: There were significant differences in menstrual pain (p <0.001) before and after treatment. The mean of menstrual pain in the treatment group (2.76 ) was lower than the menstrual pain in the control group (5.36) with p <0.001.Conclusion: Dark chocolate could reduce menstrual pain significantly in the late adolescents.

Pain during menstruation (dysmenorrhea) are the most common complaints in women. To reduce pain during menstruation (primary dysmenorrhea) there are several ways including the use of drugs-drugs analgesic, anti-inflammatory, the use of herbal remedies, relaxation techniques, exercise period, as well as massage therapy. The study aims to determine the effectiveness of consumption of dark chocolate and ginger to reduce the scale of pain in primary dysmenorrhea. This type of research is a Quasi experiment, the type of study design pretest-posttest with control group. Respondents in this experiment is a student hostel Bhakti Husada Polytechnic of Semarang Kemenkes a level 1 each-each group of 17 people for giving dark chocolate, Ginger and Control. The instruments used are NRS (Numerik Rating Scale). Data was analyzed by univariate and bivariate. Obtained results showed p-value of 0.029 (α <0.05) showed that there were significant differences between awarding dark chocolate and Ginger to decrease menstrual pain compared to the control group. Dark chocolate and ginger can be a complementary therapy to cope with menstrual pain.

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