hazelnut

A nutritional recommendation that we have been told for a long time is that every day we should eat a handful of nuts to be able to maintain good health in the long term. Here, experts specifically point out that it is not enough to eat walnuts or almonds separately, but the key is to consume mixed nuts to prevent cognitive decline. More and more voices. This is what genetic epidemiologist and microbiome expert Tim Spector has shown, who has pointed categorically that “the best way to help your brain health is to eat mixed nuts.” The problem is that, from a scientific point of view, although there is evidence that reinforces this idea, there are also others who do not think the same and do not see that nuts are an infallible prevention against neurodegeneration. It is studied. To understand how a pistachio or hazelnut can affect our memory, we must first look at the intestine. Here, a comprehensive systematic review published in 2024 in Signal Transduction and Targeted Therapy details how the intestinal microbiota It not only digests food, but regulates the functions of glial cells in the brain, becoming a therapeutic target for neurodegenerative diseases. And it is no wonder, because glial cells act as the defense system that our brain has. How it works. The mechanism proposed here mainly focuses on the theory that consuming the fiber and polyphenols present in nuts causes our intestinal bacteria to ferment them and produce short-chain fatty acids. These metabolites are capable of passing directly to our brain, reducing neuroinflammation and promoting neuronal plasticity. In fact, recent analyzes of more than 500 studies confirm that a healthy microbiota is directly associated with better connectivity in areas of the brain dedicated to memory, attention and emotions, such as the amygdala and frontal cortex. In the long term. The clearest evidence we have to date connecting nut consumption, microbiota, and cognition comes from Spain. Here is a prospective study published in the journal Age and Aging by researchers from the University of Rovira and Virgili, where it was analyzed to 747 overweight patients with metabolic syndrome for six years. Based on this sample, they began to give different portions of 30 grams of nuts to the patients and waited to see what would happen. The results suggested that with 3-7 servings of nuts a week, a significantly slower cognitive decline can be maintained. Beyond. The most interesting thing was the “how” since when analyzing the participants’ feces, they saw that the consumption of nuts increased the Shannon index, which is a marker of how rich our microbial life is in the intestine. In this way, it was seen that the consumption of nuts caused a increase in bacteria that are very beneficial for us, such as Lachnospiraceae UCG-004whose abundance was directly linked to better mental performance. Why ‘mixed’. The insistence on a variety of nuts has a microbiological basis, since systematic reviews show that each type of nut feeds slightly different bacterial families. In this way, while almonds can favor certain strains of bacteria after four weeks of consumption, walnuts, hazelnuts or pistachios enhance different ones. That is why, if we feed all the strains, diversity will be maximized, which is what interests us to generate a greater variety of neuroprotective metabolites. It’s not magic. At the moment, all the studies we have on the table are observational, so they demonstrate a strong association between eating nuts and cognitive improvement, but it is not absolute causality. Here, a meta-analysis of 2024 published in Frontiers in Nutritionwhich reviewed 5 clinical trials with 928 adults, did not find a significant overall effect of nut consumption on cognition in the short or medium term. But more recent individual trials also show some doubtssince, while a dose of 50 grams per day of almonds failed to improve long-term memory in prediabetic adults according to a study in Nutrition Journal, another similar test in the Asian Indian population did report improvements in executive function after 24 weeks. Images | Pratik Bachhav In Xataka | The pistachio has worked an unexpected wonder: generating thousands of jobs in the fields of Castilla-La Mancha