REAL LIFE NEWS: GO NUTS TO LIVE LONGER
by Hazed
So if email apnoea can cause all sorts of terrible health problems, it’s nice to learn about something that is of benefit. It turns out that eating nuts may make you live longer.
A large study reported on in the New England Journal of Medicine suggests that those munching a portion of nuts every day get the most benefit.
Now, I know what you’re thinking. People who eat nuts every day are more likely to have a generally healthy lifestyle, so it’s not exactly surprising that they live longer. But apparently the scientists took this into account, and when they compared the nut-eaters to other healthy people who didn’t eat nuts they found that the nuts themselves did make a big difference.
The team from the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Brigham and Women’s Hospital studied nearly 120,000 people for 30 years. The more regularly the participants ate nuts, the less likely they were to die during the study – for those eating nuts once a week, their death likelihood was 11% less, up to four portions a week reduced it by 13% and the daily nut-eaters saw their death rate cut by 20%.
The biggest difference was a reduction in deaths from heart disease of 29%, but they also saw an 11% reduction in cancer deaths.
The scientists suggest that the nuts are lowering cholesterol, inflammation and insulin resistance.
Before you start adding nuts to your daily diet, just be aware that the benefits probably won’t show up if you go for salted, honeyed or chocolate-covered nuts. Shame.
