Eating just four of these nuts a month can improve your cholesterol levels
A study shows that eating just four Brazil nuts a month may improve your cholesterol levels.
Here's a very easy way to improve your diet and hopefully your cholesterol levels too.
It involves eating four Brazil nuts.
Not four Brazil nuts a day, not even four Brazil nuts a week.
It involves eating four Brazil nuts a month.
Now, unless you have a nut allergy, adding four Brazil nuts to your diet once a month will hardly involve the mother of all lifestyle changes.
And yet...
In 2013, scientists from (you guessed it) Brazil published a study in the Journal of Nutrition and Metabolism in which ten healthy volunteers ate different quantities of Brazil nuts. Participants were given either a 50g serving, a 20g serving, a 5g serving, or no Brazil nuts at all.
One hour after the consumption, a blood sample was taken, and this was followed by further samples being taken after three, six, nine, 24, and 48 hours, and then again after five days and 30 days. I’m surprised the participants had any blood left after giving so many samples, but rest assured nobody died during the making of this study.
The first thing to note from the study results is that within hours of consuming the nuts, blood levels of the mineral selenium increased. The more nuts consumed, the bigger the increase. That’s not a surprise because Brazil nuts are one of the richest dietary sources of selenium on the planet (indeed so rich it’s a good idea not to eat too many of them, as too much selenium can be toxic to us humans). Levels of selenium returned to baseline just as quickly as they had risen and remained so for the rest of the study. Again, as expected.
But things get really interesting when you look at the impact Brazil nuts had on blood cholesterol levels.
Those who didn’t eat nuts saw no change in cholesterol levels.
Participants who consumed a 5g serving didn’t have anyone doing cartwheels either.
But eating either 20g or 50g of Brazil nuts resulted in a significant lowering of LDL-cholesterol after nine hours, with the lowest levels being reached after 48 hours.
Meanwhile, levels of HDL-cholesterol started to rise six hours after consumption and continued to climb until day five.
LDL-cholesterol is considered “bad” cholesterol because of its association with an increased risk of heart disease, while HDL-cholesterol is thought of as “good” cholesterol because it decreases the risk of heart disease. So, if the bad one falls and the good one rises, happy days.
But there’s more.
At the study’s end, levels of LDL-cholesterol hadn’t increased after falling and levels of HDL-cholesterol hadn’t decreased after rising, meaning the positive impact of eating just four Brazil nuts lasted for 30 days.
Why four Brazil nuts? A typical Brazil nut weighs 5g and the improvements in both LDL-cholesterol and HDL-cholesterol were most pronounced after consuming 20g of nuts. This means that eating just four Brazil nuts might be an easy way to improve your cholesterol numbers for up to 30 days while avoiding the excess selenium you would get consuming 50g.
One small dietary change. One giant step forward for the health of mankind.
Now, this was a very small study involving just ten people. I contacted the authors to ask if there were plans to replicate the findings in a larger one, but unfortunately they have hit a brick wall as far as funding goes.
That doesn’t stop you doing your own in-house experiment though.
If you get your cholesterol levels checked regularly, you can see what eating four Brazil nuts does for your numbers. It could be that you will see similar results. Eating four Brazil nuts once a month might be a wise investment, regardless. Worse case, your cholesterol levels don’t budge, but you’ll still be improving your diet by a smidgen because Brazil nuts are full of goodness. Besides selenium, they are a rich source of numerous other minerals including magnesium, copper, zinc, calcium, potassium, and iron, as well as thiamin (Vitamin B1), Vitamin E and a whole host of other micronutrients.
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Article last updated: 5th of August 2024
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