Scientists from Imo State University and elsewhere found that eating walnuts daily could help reduce ‘bad’ blood cholesterol and high blood pressure.
Nuts have been widely used to improve heart health.
For example, walnut-enriched diets have been found could lead to lower total cholesterol, LDL cholesterol, and triglycerides, the most common form of fat in the bloodstream.
In this study, researchers aimed to examine the efficacy of walnut as an adjuvant statin in people with high blood pressure.
They conducted a clinical trial that lasted for 3 months and tested 45 people with high blood pressure treatment, aged 45-65 years.
These people were assigned to intervention and placebo groups according to their blood pressure defined by the American Heart Association criteria.
Fifteen people without high blood pressure were also recruited for this study.
The participants in the intervention group took daily 7 g of boiled walnut as snacks. The team focused on low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL cholesterol, ‘bad’ cholesterol).
The researchers found the mean LDLc levels of the intervention groups were much lower than the placebo group.
They also found the high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDLc) levels of the intervention groups were much higher than the placebo.
The mean total cholesterol levels of the intervention groups were much lower than the placebo group.
The intervention groups also had much lower systolic and diastolic blood pressure compared to the placebo.
Finally, the supplementation of walnut strongly improved metabolic factors.
Based on the findings, the team concludes that the use of walnut as a statin adjuvant during high blood pressure treatment could reduce LDL cholesterol levels and improve HDL levels.
The research was published in Clinical and Experimental Hypertension and conducted by Peter U Amadi et al.
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