GO NUTS!

Our basic premise is that your body is amazing. You get a do over. It doesn’t take that long, and it isn’t that hard if you know what to do. In these notes, we give you a short course in what to do so it becomes easy for you, and for you to teach others. We want you to know how much control you have over both the quality and length of your life.

This month we want you to Go Nuts. Yes, GO NUTS every day. Another key study—it is HUGE—looked at 3 million years of men and women’s lives– and indicates that eating an ounce of nuts a night (walnuts are our favorite for health benefits, as they are the only nuts with those omega-3) can reduce your risk of dying from any cause by 20%–that’s as great as your benefit from walking an extra 6,000 steps a day or quitting a ¼ pack per day cigarette habit. That’s a HUGE effect from an ounce of nuts… and the people who did it were thinner too!

Yes, we already had nine studies including three randomized controlled trials (the “gold standard” of studies) indicating nuts reduced risk of major chronic diseases, including cardiovascular disease, and type 2 diabetes mellitus, and one on cancer of the breast and prostate with walnuts… so what’s so big here?

What’s so important is this data covered “all causes of death” —heart disease, stroke, cancer of all types, respiratory disease—and it involved many people followed for many years. Let’s get specific about this study, and then we’ll describe some of the others that support an ounce of GOING NUTS EVERY NIGHT as a way to stay younger.

This study examined nut consumption and subsequent total and cause-specific mortality among 76,464 women in the Nurses’ Health Study (1980–2010) and 42,498 men in the Health Professionals Follow-up Study (1986–2010). Nut consumption was assessed at baseline and updated every two to four years. Now, here’s a HUGE part—they followed these people for nearly three decades, during which time 16,200 women and 11,229 men died. Nut consumption was inversely associated with total mortality among both women and men, after adjustment for all other known or suspected risk factors. The ratio for death among participants who ate nuts, as compared with those who did not, was 0.80 for seven or more times per week—in our terms that means your RealAge is 2.6 years younger from just eating an ounce of nuts every day. WOW. Who knew getting younger could be so easy—and I love nuts!

Now for some other data: Walnuts and Pistachios are the Mike Roizen and Mehmet Oz of nuts – cause like us, they’ve got a hard shell covering a center of pure goodness (stop that laughing!)…

Walnuts: In a large Spanish study comparing a Mediterranean-style diet with 1.5 ounces of nuts and/or olive oil a day versus the usual Spanish diet, the walnuts-olive oil groups enjoyed a 30% reduced heart attack and stroke rate, not too shabby from just enjoying walnuts. And, eating two ounces of shelled walnuts a day made blood vessels more flexible (a sign of heart health) and improved cholesterol levels, reduced high blood pressure, and made glucose control, and insulin regulation better.

Please turn over…

But these walnuts aren’t the only nuts that have turned out to help you achieve a younger RealAge! A very interesting study about pistachios looked at the amount of healthy bacteria in stool samples of people who ate pistachios compared to those who ate no pistachios at all. It turns out that pistachios came out the winner for promoting the growth of beneficial microbes in the digestive tract; another choice, almonds, ranked number two (no pun intended).

So any nut, even peanuts (a legume), reduced all cause mortality in that large recent study. But we have our own favorite ways of eating them. It seems nuts have their own hierarchy (and we’re not talking about who gets voted off the island first). You want them to be raw, fresh, and unsalted. That’s because nuts lose up to 15 percent of their healthy oils when they’re roasted (roasting at high temperatures may even cause the formation of chemicals that promote aging). Here’s our pecking order for processing nuts, from best to worst:

• Fresh
• Freshly toasted or dry roasted (in your oven: roast at 350F for 9 minutes)
• Roasted in their own fat and salted (packaged)

We don’t eat any nuts roasted in partially hydrogenated fat or nuts that are sugared.

Tony Soprano’s sidekick Paulie ‘Walnuts’ Gualtieri was always frantically worried about his health. He could have found it in eating an ounce of his nickname a day. That would have made him and will make you healthier, happier, and protect your heart, brain, lungs, sex life, kidneys, and that youthful glow on your skin! So enjoy GOING NUTS EVERY DAY!!

Thanks for reading. And feel free to send more questions–you can always send us questions at youdocs@gmail.com, and some of them we may know enough to answer (we’ll try to get answers for you if we do not know).

Young Dr Mike Roizen (aka, The Enforcer)

NOTE: You should NOT take this as medical advice.
This article is of the opinion of its author.
Before you do anything, please consult with your doctor.