Handful of pistachios a day could help people with diabetes manage stress
New research suggests that eating pistachios can improve the health of people with diabetes by reducing the body’s response to stress.
The study, published in the Journal of the American Heart Association, found that two servings of pistachios per day “lowered vascular constriction during stress and improved neural control of the heart” in adults with type 2 diabetes.
The finding comes from a team of researchers at Penn State University, USA, who investigated the effects of pistachios on responses to standardised stress tasks in patients with well-controlled type 2 diabetes.
All participants were put on a typical American diet, which contained 36% fat and 12% saturated fats, for two weeks, and then randomly assigned to one of two test diets – a standard heart healthy diet (27% fat and 7% saturated fat) and a diet containing two daily servings of pistachio nuts (roughly 150 nuts per day). The latter diet was 33% fat and 7% saturated fat.
At the end of each four-week diet period, blood pressure was measured along with participants’ total peripheral vascular resistance at rest and during two stress tests.
Compared with the low fat, heart healthy diet, the pistachio diet lowered vascular constriction during the stress tests. In other words, blood …read more
Source: News from Diabetes.co.uk