Going Nuts for Nuts. Part Two

Overview

Inflammation

Inflammation is a key process in the development of atherosclerosis associated with future cardiovascular disease events. Chronic inflammation is also closely related to the pathogenesis of type 2 diabetes.

• Some nuts and seeds are high in alpha-linolenic acid (ALA), a type of anti-inflammatory omega-3 fatty acid.
• Some nuts are rich in magnesium, l-arginine, and vitamin E, which may also play a role in keeping inflammation under control.
• Nuts and seeds are high in calories, so do not eat them mindlessly.
• A study out of Australia reported the results of following about 2,500 older adults and their diets for 15 years. During that time, about 200 died of inflammatory diseases. And so, the researchers tried to calculate what it was about the diets of the survivors that seemed to help the most, and it was nuts.
  • Half a walnut a day appeared to cut the risk of dying from the inflammatory disease in about half. In the study, “increasing the consumption of nuts by as little as 1.4 grams a day”—that is about half the weight of a penny—” was associated with a reduced 49% risk of dying from chronic inflammation-related diseases.” That is like one almond a day.
• Another study analyzed cross-sectional data from 5013 participants.
  • A greater intake of nuts was associated with lower amounts of a subset of inflammatory biomarkers, after adjusting for demographic, medical, dietary, and lifestyle variables.

Heart disease

• A pooled analysis was recently published of 25 interventional trials investigating nut consumption and the levels of fatty substances (like cholesterol) in the blood.
  • Looking at four of the best studies of nut consumption, and risk of death from heart disease.
    • cut the risk of our number one killer in half, with one simple, dietary change—adding nuts to our daily diet.
  • Be cautious of who funded the studies.
    • One study compared to the control group—who were instead made to eat pork.
  • 43 years ago, a paper in the New England Journal [of Medicine]: “Sudden Death and Ischemic Heart Disease: Correlation with Hardness of the Local Water Supply.”
    • On autopsy, the hearts of sudden cardiac death victims had significantly lower magnesium concentrations

Breast Cancer

• 2012 review: the more fiber you get in your diet.
  • Two servings of nuts a week were associated with a 36% lower risk.

[ The following is the full transcript from this week's post. This is a health blog with a focus on weight loss. Please consider that all episodes are unscripted, direct to the camera, with focused talking points. ]

So last week, we had a conversation about nuts and the impact notes can have on your weight.

And I want to talk to you a little bit more about nuts today. Specifically, are there any health benefits associated with eating nuts?

There are, one thing I want to caution you on though, is that, again, nuts have a high caloric content, meaning that there is a lot of calories in nuts.

So, you need to be cautious because it is really easy to consume excess calories when eating nuts because it just takes a small quantity to really get your caloric intake.

So, the first thing I want to talk about is nuts and their impact on inflammation.

One thing, we know that a lot of illnesses are the end result of inflammation.

What I mean by that, so we are learning that coronary artery disease or heart disease is really an inflammatory process.

Lots of cancers are associated with inflammation.

And really, inflammation is very much a common denominator and a lot of illnesses.

Does a diet rich in nuts help with that information? And yes it does is the simple answer.

So chronic inflammation, as I said, is already associated with a lot of illnesses. Actually, nuts can help reduce chronic inflammation.

So, one of the mechanisms that we know that nuts sure are high in fat content and are specifically high with an anti-inflammatory omega-three fatty acid that helps fight inflammation.

So, one of the components is the Omega-three fatty acids.

Another component is nuts are often rich in magnesium and some other micronutrients. These are also thought to play a key role in inflammation or the protection of inflammation.

There was actually one study done in Australia, where they followed over twenty-five hundred older adults for about 15 years, and then basically tried to look at what their diet was, but also based on what happened, what was the cause of death. In that group of 2500, there were about 200 that died from inflammatory disease.

Then the researchers looked and said, is there anything that seemed to be impacting these groups of people differently? And one of the things they determined was that nuts significantly decrease your risk of dying from the inflammatory disease process.

They said to intake as little as 1.4 grams a day. That is basically, less than the weight of a penny. That nut consumption is associated with a 49% decreased risk of death, due to any sort of chronic inflammatory disease.

So really, that is basically eating an almond a day to drastically decrease your risk of deaths related to some inflammatory diseases.

In another study, there were so over 5000 participants, and they found that nut consumption was associated with lower, inflammatory markers so that people that eat nuts. They measure certain chemicals in their blood and found that there, markers of information were lower.

So, there is quite a bit of evidence to support that nuts can be healthy for us, in multiple ways.

One of those ways is in reducing or prevention, the chronic inflammatory process, that ties a lot of diseases together, one of those diseases, specifically heart disease. So, I want to talk a little bit about the specifics of heart disease and nut consumption.

So, there was one group of investigators that really wanted to know, what is the impact nuts have, specifically on your cholesterol or things like that.

And they basically looked at 25 different studies, trying to see what they know the information they could, kind of, glean from this.

One of the things that were evident was basically simply eating nuts, or adding nuts to your daily diet, would significantly cut your risk down of death, specifically cardiac death. In fact, it is estimated to be cutting half of your risk of sudden cardiac death.

That is pretty significant.

People that have heart disease often do not know they have heart disease and the majority of their first symptom of heart disease a sudden cardiac death.

So, nut consumption is something that can actually help reduce.

Now, whenever you are looking at research, it is important to understand follow the money if you will.

And when you look into your studies, it is important to understand who is funding the studies because it is really easy to try to highlight data that you want and kind of ignore other data that doesn’t help your cause.

So, in looking at these studies that would be one of the criticisms because the nut industry was heavily involved in helping fund 70 studies.

But again, they still do show so positive light on the impact nuts can have in relation to heart disease.

Another study basically, was looking at sudden cardiac deaths. Actually, during the autopsy, they looked at people and they found that a lot of people with heart pumps needed have lower magnesium concentrations.

That is one of the beliefs that nuts may impact your overall health in cardiac death is because some nuts are rich in magnesium.

So, lots of evidence to support the value nuts have.

The final category I want to talk about is cancer, specifically breast cancer.

And there was a study, that concluded that you can significantly reduce your risk of breast cancer by eating nuts.

Now, one of the kinds of the flaws of this study was that it may not necessarily be so many nuts as much as fiber and we were learning diets rich in fiber help prevent cancer.

And so, in this study, they found that two servings of nuts in a week were associated with a 36% risk reduction in breast cancer.

But some of that, you know, could be attributed to just a higher fiber content.

Now, not necessarily nuts, specifically, but again, good evidence to show that nuts can have a positive impact on our overall health.

But again, the final word of caution, as I said in the beginning, nuts are very dense with calories.

And so, you know, you can sit down and started some raw almonds and before you know it, you have consumed a significant number of calories.

And again, a healthy weight is also based on your caloric needs, an excess calorie intake leads to an increase in fat.

So, it is important to understand what we are eating, but also how much we are doing.

So, remember nuts in moderation can have significant health benefits, so I would encourage you to find nuts you like and enjoy them periodically.

Thank you.

Kelly Cox MD, FACEP

Member, American Academy of Anti-Aging Medicine