Go nuts! Your heart with thank you – especially if you are living with diabetes.
People with diabetes who regularly eat nuts may be less likely to develop heart disease than their counterparts who rarely, if ever, consume nuts, a study by the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in Boston suggests.
Diabetics who ate at least five 28-gram servings of nuts a week were 17 percent less likely to develop heart disease than people with diabetes who had no more than one serving of nuts weekly, the study found.
A 28-gram serving of nuts is about 24 almonds, 18 cashews, 12 hazelnuts, and 14 walnut halves – 68 nuts in total. Even just one serving of nuts might still be good for the heart, however. For people with diabetes, adding just one extra serving of nuts a week was associated with a three percent lower risk of developing cardiac conditions and six percent lower risk of dying from heart problems.
Too many nuts may not necessarily be a good thing, however because of their fat content. Tree nuts such as walnuts, almonds, Brazil nuts, cashews, pistachios, pecans, macadamias, hazelnuts and pine nuts were more strongly linked to a lower risk of heart disease than peanuts, which are actually legumes that grow underground.
