The study looked at over 210,000 people, including women from the Nurses’ Health Study and Nurses’ Health Study II and men from the Health Professionals Follow-up Study, with up to 32 years of follow-up. In total, 14,136 incident CVD cases, including 8,390 CHD and 5,910 stroke cases were documented. The results indicated that regular nut consumption was associated with a 13-19% lower risk of CVD and a 15-23% lower risk of CHD, independently from other cardiovascular risk, lifestyle and dietary factors.
“Our findings support recommendations of increasing the intake of a variety of nuts, as part of healthy dietary patterns, to reduce the risk of chronic disease in the general populations,” said Dr. Marta Guasch-Ferre, lead author of the study and research fellow at the Department of Nutrition at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health to the American College of Cardiology (November 6, 2017).
Guasch-Ferré, M., Liu, X., Malik V. S., Sun, Q., … Bhupathiraju, S.M. (2017). Nut Consumption and Risk of Cardiovascular Disease. J Am Coll Cardiol 2017;70:2519-32.