The benefits of nuts for women

Nuts, also known as shell fruits, are mostly cotyledons or endosperm of plant seeds, which have high nutritional value. Time magazine in the United States once rated it as one of the nutritional foods of modern people 10. Nuts are generally divided into two categories: first, tree nuts, including almonds, cashews, hazelnuts, walnuts, pine nuts, chestnuts, ginkgo (ginkgo), pistachios, macadamia nuts and so on. The second is seeds, including peanuts, sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds and watermelon seeds. Nuts contain 36.0% protein, 58.8% fat, 72.6% carbohydrate and vitamins (vitamins B and E, etc.). ), trace elements (phosphorus, calcium, zinc, iron) and dietary fiber. In addition, it contains monounsaturated fatty acids and polyunsaturated fatty acids, including linolenic acid, linoleic acid and other essential fatty acids. The benefits of nuts to human health are mainly shown in the following aspects: 1. Scavenging free radicals. Free radicals are very active and will react with cell tissues and DNA in the human body, resulting in toxicity and damage. Studies have shown that some nut foods, such as sunflower seeds, have a strong ability to scavenge free radicals, and their effects can be comparable to those of strawberries and spinach. 2. Reduce the risk of type 2 diabetes in women. Researchers from the Department of Nutrition, School of Public Health, Harvard University conducted a follow-up survey of 84,000 women aged 34-59 in 1 1 countries for as long as 16 years. The results show that eating more nuts can significantly reduce the risk of type 2 diabetes. They believe that nuts are rich in unsaturated fat and other nutrients, which helps to improve the balance between blood sugar and insulin. 3. Reduce the rate of sudden cardiac death. Because some components in nuts have antiarrhythmic effects, eating nuts is obviously related to reducing sudden cardiac death after controlling known heart risk factors and reasonable diet. Compared with people who seldom or never eat nuts, people who eat nuts twice or more a week have a lower risk of sudden cardiac death and coronary heart disease death. 4. Adjust blood lipids. In 2002, Professor peking university health science center Xiao Ying and others took 85 patients with hyperlipidemia as the research object, and gave them 75 grams of American almonds every day for four weeks to observe their blood lipids. The results showed that after taking almond, serum total cholesterol and apolipoprotein B decreased significantly, and apolipoprotein A 1 increased significantly. It shows that American almonds rich in monounsaturated fatty acids have a good regulatory effect on blood lipid and apolipoprotein levels in patients with hyperlipidemia. 5. Improve your eyesight. It is found that chewing intensity can improve vision to some extent, and eating more nuts can improve vision. The ciliary muscle of the eye can adjust the lens of the eyeball. The adjustment function of the ciliary muscle depends on the muscle strength of the face, and the enhancement of the muscle strength of the face benefits from the chewing intensity. Modern people's food is softening day by day, and little or no chewing is needed when eating, which weakens facial muscle strength, reduces the adjustment function of ciliary muscle to eyeball lens, and easily reduces vision. Therefore, to improve your eyesight, you should eat more hard food and stick to chewing food for a long time. 6. Healthy brain. Brain cells are composed of 60% unsaturated fatty acids and 35% protein. Therefore, for the development of the brain, the first nutrition needed is unsaturated fatty acids. Nut food contains a lot of unsaturated fatty acids, 15%~20% high-quality protein and more than a dozen important amino acids, which are the main components of brain cells. Nuts are also rich in vitamin B 1, B2, B6, vitamin E, calcium, phosphorus, iron, zinc and other substances beneficial to brain nerve cells. Therefore, eating nuts is very beneficial to improve brain nutrition, especially for pregnant women and children.