Diet rich in Walnuts can have positive effects on Type 2 Diabetics
4 Nov 2009
Juan Valverde
Later this year we published in this web page the results of several studies on the effect of Mediterranean diet (basically rich in fruit, vegetables and fish) on hypertension. The first one was a Meta-analysis of works conducted between 1950s up to 2007 and the second one was a clinical trial on middle age population in Spain (for more information, visit the following link). The first one was more ambitious and tried to pull out (through mathematical modeling) what type of specific foods gave "strong" evidence for being beneficial effects for cardiovascular diseases. These foods were in particular vegetables and nuts.
A recent work published in Diabetes Care conducted in Prevention Research Centre of Yale University School of Medicine, shows that a diet enriched (spontaneously) in walnuts, improves the dilatation of the thin layer of cells that line the interior surface of blood vessels (endothelium-dependent vasodilatation) in type 2 diabetics, which suggests a potential reduction in overall cardiac risk for these type of patients.
Therefore this study adds more evidence to support the beneficial effects on Cardiovascular diseases of increased consumption of nuts. Other previous studies have reported benefits for almonds, macadamia nuts and pistachios.
This recently work was conducted on 24 type 2 diabetics and randomly separated them into two groups: (1) a group that was given ad libitum (spontaneously) a wal-nut rich diet for eight weeks and (2) a group that wasn't.
The blood-flow was found to significantly improve in the "Walnut group". Other biomarkers such as blood sugar levels and total cholesterol levels were also decreased from baseline values. However these values were not as significant as for the blood flow.
Ma, Y.; Njike, V. Y.; Millet, J.; Dutta, S.; Doughty, K.; Treu, J. A.; Katz, D. L., Effects of Walnut Consumption on Endothelial Function in Type 2 Diabetics: A Randomized, Controlled, Cross-Over Trial. Diabetes Care 2009.
Direct link to this paper at:
http://care.diabetesjournals.org/content/early/2009/10/23/dc09-1156.abstract
