By Jo Nova
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 […]
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