It's just plain nutty - but it helps your heart!

I just read an interesting article online about the heart healthy benefits of eating nuts. According to Dr. Gerald Gau (who is a Mayo Clinic preventive cardiologist and a specialist in internal medicine and cardiovascular diseases), studies show that eating nuts can help your heart by:

• lowering the LDL, low-density lipoprotein or "bad," cholesterol level in the blood
  
• reducing your risk of developing blood clots that can cause a fatal heart attack
  
• improving the health of the lining of your arteries
  

According to the article, walnuts are the most healthy for you, but you can also enjoy hazelnuts, almonds, macadamia nuts and pecans are also good for your heart. Even peanuts, which are not nuts at all but legumes, are good for you - as long as you eat them in moderation, of course.

The correct amount is a tiny handful once a day, and used in place of saturated fats.

The article lists the following reasons that nuts are so good for you: "...the unsaturated fats in nuts — both monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats — lower bad cholesterol levels. Many nuts are also rich in omega-3 fatty acids. Omega-3s are a healthy form of fatty acids that seem to help your heart by, among other things, preventing dangerous heart rhythms that can lead to heart attacks. Omega-3 fatty acids are also found in fish, but nuts are one of the best plant-based sources of omega-3 fatty acids. Nuts also have lots of arginine, which is a molecule that increases the production of nitric oxide in your body, which may in turn help improve the health of your artery walls and make them more flexible and less prone to blood clots. Other substances in nuts that could improve your heart health include Vitamin E and fiber."

To read the entire article about why nuts are good for your heart, just click the link.,

It may keep the vampires away, but new study crushes garlic's hopes for fighting cholesterol

If you're worried about vampires, bad good night kisses from blind dates, or just enjoy the flavor, keep plenty of garlic around. But if you're using it to lower your cholesterol, you might just be crushed by the latest study about garlic!

The result of the study, which appeared in the Feb. 26 issue of the "Archives of Internal Medicine" reported that the study included both fresh garlic and some of the most popular garlic supplements.

"We did a bigger and better trial than has ever been done before and with NIH (National Institutes of Health) funding, not with supplement-manufacturer funding. And as far as lowering cholesterol, garlic didn't work," said Christopher D. Gardner, study lead author and nutrition scientist and assistant professor with the Stanford Prevention Research Center in Stanford, Calif.

If you have too much LDL (low-density lipoprotein) cholesterol in your arteries, you are at greater risk for having a stroke or heart attack - which is still one of the leading causes of death in women, especially women
of that certain age."

Having LDL levels below 130 mg/dl is considered to be in the healthy range.

Historians have traced the use of garlic as a cure for many serious illnesses back as far as Egypt, around 1500 B.C.!

192 men and women between the ages of 30 and 65 participated in the study. All participants had what is considered "moderately high" LDL cholesterol levels (about 140 mg/dl on average).

Garnder's team focused on the moderate-level group because they wanted people who were not taking prescription drugs like statins, to keep the results from being affected. They assumed that people with moderate LDL levels were more likely to be using herbal or natural supplements to try to reduce their cholesterol.

And, by the way, pregnant women, smokers, people with heart disease, cancer, or diabetes, and current users of high blood pressure or lipid-lowering medications were excluded from the study.

The study ran for six months, and all participants took the equivalent of a four-gram clove of garlic in one of three forms: either mixed into a sandwich in raw form or as one of two popular commercially-available supplements, Garlicin and Kyolic-100 six days a week during that time.

The results: Blood tests revealed that none of the garlic options had any "clinically relevant effect" on LDL concentrations over the course of the study, either in the short run or the long run.

They concluded that neither dietary garlic nor supplements are likely to offer any such benefit to most patients seeking to lower their LDL levels.

To read more about their findings, click here: study shows garlic doesn't lower cholesterol.