Thirty years ago a study reported a lower risk of fatal heart attacks in people who ate nuts four times a week.
Since then scores of studies have shown the same general conclusion, popped out in the news, then got forgotten til the next one. Last week a mega review whittled them down to just 42 “cohort” studies on 1.9 million people and concluded that yes, nuts really do reduce heart disease deaths by around 25%, it’s “probably causal” say the researchers. And it most likely works through reducing blood lipids, though it might be displacing something bad.
They did also look at 18 randomized controlled studies of just 2,266 people to check for causality.
My thought for the day is if, in the extreme case, 1 in 4 heart attacks are caused by a nut deficiency and solveable with a daily dose of 50 cents worth of nuts, we could save quite a few people, not to mention hospital budgets. Coronary Heart Disease remains the biggest killer in the West. In the USA 700,000 people die of it nearly every year, which means something like 150,000 people might theoretically still be alive had they eaten more nuts. And that’s just in the US.
It might be cost effective (not to mention humane) if our Ministry of Health tried to get the message out. This would seem extra sensible given that excess deaths are up 12 – 15% across the West for other unmentionable reasons. But then sensible things don’t seem to happen in government health departments.
I’m not suggesting that nuts per se are some magical medical intervention, because there are many other useful things we can do. I’m just saying that there is low hanging fruit sitting there that our Government Health Machines have little interest in. The Minister of Health isn’t handing out cashew nuts in carparks, or giving the poorest of the poor nut-subsidies. Does the Minister really want to keep people out of the Emergency Ward?
No one seems to be training doctors to ask patients if they eat any nuts at all. But patented drugs with similarish ball park figures (and many side effects) get the red carpet rolled out. Our brightest of the bright are trained for six years to write special licences for people to get these patented profitable answers.
There is a pattern here and all roads lead to a pile of money.
In terms of deaths from heart disease the big benefits come in the first ten grams a day — just getting those people who don’t normally eat any nuts to eat a few will probably save the most lives.
Figure 6b: Linear (red, dashed line) and non-linear dose-response (black lines with confidence intervals) association between total nuts and seeds consumption and coronary heart disease mortality (panel B; 9 studies) in cohort studies, with 0 g/day as reference. Circles show the effect estimates for each level of intake in the individual studies, weighted by the inverse of the standard errors. Vertical axes are log scaled.
In terms of total risk of heart disease — which still has a big effect on quality of life — the benefits appear to accrue up to 20g a day or even more.
Figure 6a: Linear (red, dashed line) and non-linear dose-response (black lines with confidence intervals) association between total nuts and seeds consumption and risk of total coronary heart disease (panel A; 14 studies), with 0 g/day as reference. Circles show the effect estimates for each level of intake in the individual studies, weighted by the inverse of the standard errors. Vertical axes are log scaled.
Studies of associations with diet and death are notoriously confounded, but with 1.9 million participants and follow up times of up to 23 years long, there is an awful lot of data suggesting that people who eat more nuts have healthier hearts. The paper itself has 167 references. It is a tome.
Eating nuts and seeds may reduce risk of heart disease
By Cara Murez, HealthDay News
One way to reduce the risk of heart disease: Eat more nuts and seeds, according to a new review of 60 studies.
Scandinavian researchers found that eating nuts could reduce the risk of a heart attack.
“If you eat a handful of nuts every day, that is around 30 grams, you will have a 20% to 25% lower risk of suffering from cardiovascular disease. In comparison, adults in the Nordic countries only eat on average around 4 grams of nuts a day. Many do not eat nuts or seeds at all,” said study co-author Erik Arnesen, research fellow at the University of Oslo.
Although scientists say, “the more the better,” eating just a few nuts is better than none at all, Arnesen said in a university news release.
Almonds, pistachios and walnuts appeared to be the best for lowering cholesterol. However, researchers said there is no conclusive evidence for recommending specific kinds of nuts over others.
“Nuts have a beneficial effect on cholesterol levels in the blood, which is important to keep low in order to prevent the buildup of fat in the arteries. This atherosclerosis, as it is called, is one of the greatest risk factors for heart attacks,” Arnesen explained.
The review involved nearly 2 million participants. Although researchers also investigated whether eating nuts reduced the risk of strokes and Type 2 diabetes, the results were not as clear.
Nuts do not appear to affect blood pressure, Arnesen said. Researchers could not determine whether they affect blood sugar.
But eating nuts is linked to improved cholesterol levels, even though the review can’t actually prove cause and effect.
“Thanks to this systematic review and meta-analysis, we can present a more precise estimate of the actual effects. Proving that nuts lower cholesterol levels provides a credible explanation for why there is a connection between eating nuts and the risk of cardiovascular disease,” Arnesen said.
REFERENCE
Arnesen et al (2023) Nuts and seeds consumption and risk of cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes and their risk factors: a systematic review and meta-analysis, Food Nutr Res. 2023; 67: 10.29219/fnr.v67.8961.
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