If you have Type 2 diabetes and want to do your heart a favour, go nutty, according to a new finding by the US National Institute of Health. Those with Type 2 diabetes who ate five or more servings of certain kinds of nuts weekly dropped their odds of heart disease by about 20 per cent, compared to people who ate less than a serving a month. A serving in the study was defined as one ounce. However, not all nuts are equal. Nuts grown on trees such as walnuts, almonds, cashews, pistachios, etc, seemed to provide more heart-health benefits than peanuts, which grow underground. The study found that nuts not only helped control blood sugar, but blood pressure and cholesterol as well. Eating nuts also appeared to help dampen inflammation and improve blood vessel health. The study included diet and health information from more than 16,000 people before and after they were diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes. Researchers found that when people ate more nuts after a diabetes diagnosis, they lowered their risk of heart disease or stroke more than 10 per cent. Eating more nuts was also tied to a 25 per cent reduction in premature death from heart disease or another cause. The findings were published in journal Circulation Research.

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March 2019