Eating Nuts Lessens Heart Risk, Study Says
Sun Jun 23, 4:08 PM ET
CHICAGO (Reuters) - Eating a handful of nuts twice or more a week may cut one's risk of deadly heart disease, based on a study of male doctors released Sunday.
Nuts and fish are plentiful in the Mediterranean diet, which is known to be heart-friendly, and many types of nuts are also a healthy source of unsaturated fats, magnesium and vitamin E, according to the report by researchers at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston.
Dr. Christine Albert examined the nut consumption of more than 21,000 male doctors participating in the U.S. Physicians' Health Study, which began in 1982, and found a 47 percent lower risk of sudden cardiac death among those who consumed an ounce of nuts at least twice a week compared to those who did not eat nuts at all.
She also found a 30 percent lower risk of coronary heart disease death among the nut eaters. The correlation did not apply for nonfatal heart attacks.
"If the observed associations between dietary habits such as nut and fish consumption are causal, then these dietary interventions could be applied with little risk," Albert wrote.
There were 201 sudden cardiac deaths and 566 heart disease deaths among the study subjects over the 17 years they were tracked.
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