A recent paper published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology confirms what researchers have been saying for some time, now; that eating Nuts can reduce your risk of heart disease. But the new study also looks at the relative merits of different kinds of nuts…
Eating any kind of Tree Nut or Peanut can help you reduce your risk of cardiac disease!
Most of us have heard of ‘data mining, but most of us don’t really know what that means. In the science community, it’s simple: Researchers look at information gathered in large surveys about people’s health, diet, activity level and other factors in their lives. Then, researchers from all over the map come in and search for correlations. That is, they use computers to look for connections between different aspects of our lives and then draw relevant conclusions.
So it is with the latest findings linking the consumption of Nuts to improved cardiac health.
What they found…
Scientists compared the heart health of more than 210,000 survey participants who had been followed up over 32 years. They found that study participants who ate Peanuts or Tree Nuts two or more times per week had a 13 percent lower risk of cardiac disease and a 15 percent lower risk of cardiovascular disease than people who never ate Nuts. They also had a 15 percent and 23 percent lower risk of coronary heart disease, respectively, compared to those who never consumed nuts.
Those who ate who consumed five or more servings of nuts a week had a 14 percent lower risk of cardiovascular disease and a 20 percent lower risk of coronary heart disease than participants who never or almost never consumed nuts. That appears to be the optimum amount of Nuts to eat for best results.
Peanuts, which are really legumes, like peas or Lentils, appeared to have benefits equal to randomly-chosen Tree Nuts, and Walnuts, specifically. Walnuts and Walnut Oil are widely recommended by naturopaths and dietary supplement experts as a defense against heart disease, so that soft finding has now been confirmed with hard evidence.
And take heart (pun intended), folks who don’t eat Nuts ‘in the raw’: Peanut Butter counts!
But there’s more research still to be done…
Emilio Ros, MD, PHD, of the Endocrinology and Nutrition service at the Hospital Clínic in Barcelona and investigator of CIBEROBN, a research network of Instituto de Salud Carlos III, Spain, sees the big picture:
“Ideally, further investigations should test the effects of long-term consumption of nuts supplemented into the usual diet on hard cardiometabolic events,” Ros commented. “In the meantime, raw nuts, if possible unpeeled and otherwise unprocessed, may be considered as natural health capsules that can be easily incorporated into any heart-protective diet to further cardiovascular well-being and promote healthy aging.”
~ Maggie J.