Walnuts Health Benefits and Nutritional Value
Walnuts are extremely good for your health and should be included in your daily diet. They go well in a fresh salad with mandarin oranges or apple slices or you can include walnuts in your oatmeal and sweeten the mixture with raisins or dried cranberries. Just a handful of the nuts daily will help improve your health and your mind because of the omega-3 fatty acids the walnut contains.
Walnut Nutritional Value
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If you eat just a quarter cup of walnuts each day, you'll get approximately 94.6 percent of your daily value of omega-3 fatty acids. Besides boosting your brain, omega-3 fatty acids also play other important roles in your body.
For instance, Omega-3 fatty acid helps reduce the symptoms of ADHD, depression, joint pain, hypertension and skin disorders. It also offsets the effects of an Omega-6 fatty acid imbalance. Both of these are essential fatty acids, this means that humans can't make the fatty acids in their own body and must derive it from consumption.
In earlier diets, before prepackaged foods, there was an equal ratio of omega-6 and omega-3 fatty acids. Unfortunately, today, the omega-6 type of fatty acid is thousands of different products. Instead of maintaining a balance, scientists estimate that the average American diet contains a 20 to one ratio of Omega-6 fatty acids to Omega-3 fatty acids.
Walnuts Health Benefits and Certain Types of Hormones
Both types of fatty acids are essential to making certain types of hormones. The hormones made by the Omega-6 helps skin tissues, blood to clot and are essential to the immune functioning by creating inflammation to trigger it and triggering cell proliferation. Those created by the Omega-3 do the opposite and decrease the functions performed by the omega-6 hormones. If you have an imbalance with too much omega-6, as most people do, it increases the risk of blood clots causing coronary problems and strokes. It also increases the potential for asthma, certain types of cancer, autoimmune diseases and neurodegenerative diseases.
Some scientists believe that an excess of omega-6 fatty acids also increases the potential for obesity, dyslexia, hyperactivity, depression and increased violence. Eating walnuts, fish, fish oil supplements and krill can help normalize the balance.
Walnuts Health Benefits Include Protection from Heart Disease
Walnuts also contain over 40 percent of the daily value of manganese, 20 percent of the DV for copper and 15 percent of tryptophan. Walnuts also contain other phytonutrients and a form of vitamin E found in few other foods. Most vitamin E exists in the form of alpha-tocopherol, however, in the walnut its form is gamma-tocopherol. The gamma-tocopherol is particularly important in providing men with protection from heart disease.
The phytonutrients found in walnuts are phenols. Ninety percent of these are in the skins of the walnut. They include phenolic acids, flavonoids and tannins to name a few. These have anti-inflammatory and anti-oxidant properties. Some of those phytonutrients exist in no other sources of foods. Quinone juglone is one example. Tannin tellimagrandin and morin are two examples of phytonutrients that exist in other foods but are rare.
If you eat walnuts, you can also help control your blood sugar and the insulin metabolism. Many newer studies show that people with type-2 diabetes can help not only their diabetes, but also improve their cardiovascular system by including a small amount of walnuts in their diet every day.
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