Walnuts lower blood pressure
Nutritionists and health experts say that eating walnuts can help lower blood pressure.
Researchers in a new study found that eating walnuts helps people at risk for cardiovascular disease lower their blood pressure. According to researchers, walnuts should be part of a diet that is low in saturated fat.
The study is the first to examine how the compounds in walnuts affect heart health, say US researchers. Walnuts contain omega-3 plants called alpha linolenic acid, which is associated with a good effect on blood pressure.
The researchers studied whether the combination of alpha-linolenic acid helps improve heart health or whether other substances, such as polyphenols, are effective in controlling blood pressure in people at risk for cardiovascular disease.
They studied 45 people aged 30 to 65 who were obese or overweight. All of them followed a diet containing 12% of the calories from saturated fats two weeks before starting the study. They were then divided into three groups and received three different diets that were low in saturated fat.
These three regimes are:
Diet containing walnuts
Walnut-free diet containing equal amounts of alpha linolenic acid and unsaturated fatty acids
And a walnut-free diet that has been replaced by an equal amount of alpha linolenic acid in walnuts and another fatty acid called oleic acid.
The researchers looked at their cardiovascular health factors and found that their heart health improved somewhat. The findings showed that replacing saturated fats with unsaturated fats derived from walnuts or other vegetable oils leads to cardiovascular health.
According to Medical News Today, they also stressed that people whose diets contained walnuts had lower blood pressure than the other two groups.