It sounds a little — pardon the pun — nutty, but there's growing recognition that eating nuts as part of a healthy diet is good for your heart. Nuts, which contain unsaturated fatty acids and other nutrients, are a great snack food, too. They're cheap and easy to store.
The type of nut you eat isn't that important. Walnuts, almonds, hazelnuts, you name it, almost every type of nut has a lot of nutrition packed into a tiny package. If you have heart disease, eating nuts instead of a less healthy snack can help you more easily follow a heart-healthy diet.
Dr. Gerald Gau is a Mayo Clinic preventive cardiologist and is a specialist in internal medicine and cardiovascular diseases. He's been involved with the National Cholesterol Education Program Coordinating Committee, which develops national cholesterol guidelines. He shares his insights on the heart-health benefits of eating nuts.
Can eating nuts help your heart?
It sure looks that way. Most studies on people who eat nuts as part of a heart-healthy diet have found that nuts lower the LDL, low-density lipoprotein or "bad," cholesterol level in the blood.
...more
No comments:
Post a Comment