Walnuts may be heart-healthy nuts

Teaching Brief® - MedPage Today: "
MedPage Today Action Points
Explain to interested patients that walnuts contain alpha-linoleic acid (a plant-based omega-3 fatty acid) and other "cardioprotective constituents" such as L-arginine and antioxidants.
Caution patients that the study looked at the effect of walnuts or olive oil added to a fatty meal in individuals on an otherwise healthy Mediterranean diet, rather than the effect on individuals who repeatedly ate high fat content meals, and did not deal with weight gain.

Review
BARCELONA, Spain, Oct. 10 -- Walnuts may be heart-healthy nuts, suggest Spanish researchers.
While both raw walnuts and olive oil decreased the sudden onset of arterial inflammation and oxidation after an unhealthy meal, the walnuts were better at keeping arteries flexible, they found.
But patients should not take this as an excuse to regularly eat fat-filled meals, followed by a handful of walnuts, said Emilio Ros, M.D., Ph.D., of the Lipid Clinic at Hospital Clínico here, and colleagues, in the Oct. 17 Journal of the American College of Cardiology.
The study, they pointed out, was small, and it looked at the effect of a single meal on individuals whose regular fare was a healthy Mediterranean diet.
Yet study participants had better arterial elasticity after a walnut-containing meal than an olive oil-containing meal. For those with moderately high cholesterol, postprandial flow-mediated dilation of the brachial artery was:
Improved by 24% when they ate walnuts with their high-fat meal (4.1% dilation before meal to 5.1% after), but
Impaired by 36% when they ate olive oil with the meal instead (3.6% dilation before meal to 2.3% after).
For individuals with normal cholesterol levels, the postprandial flow-mediated dilation was:
Unchanged in participants with normal cholesterol levels when they ate walnuts with the meal (4.2% dilation before meal to 4.2% after),
But impaired by 17% after they ate the olive oil-containing meal (4.7% dilation before meal to 3.9% after). /.../"