by
Christina Hwang, Contributing Reporter | June 16, 2016
May lead to a 34
percent lower risk of
overall mortality
Eating tree nuts — such as almonds, Brazil nuts, cashews, hazelnuts, macadamias, pecans, pine nuts, pistachios and walnuts — five or more times a week reduced the overall risk of mortality for prostate cancer patients, a large prospective study has shown.
The researchers, led by Dr. Ying Bao, Sc.D., from the department of medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School, followed 47,299 men from 1986-2012, where every two to four years, the men reported on their diet and lifestyle.
During the 26 years of follow up, 6,810 men were diagnosed with prostate cancer and 4,346 of those men had non-metastatic cancer, cancer that has not spread from the place where it started to other places in the body.
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“In the first part of the study, we asked the questions whether consuming more nuts prevents getting prostate cancer,” Dr. Bao told HCB News. “We did not observe an association. In the second part of the study, we asked the question whether consuming more nuts reduces death rates among non-metastatic prostate cancer patients.”
The team found that non-metastatic prostate cancer patients who consumed nuts five or more times per week after diagnosis had a 34 percent lower rate of mortality when compared to those who ate nuts less than once a month.
Only about 10 percent of the 4,346 men died from prostate cancer and approximately one third of the patients died from cardiovascular disease and the rest from other causes.
“Large studies have consistently shown that increased nut consumption was associated with reduced cardiovascular disease incidence and mortality,” Bao said. “Nuts are dense in nutrients and bioactive compounds that may confer cardio-protective, anti-inflammatory, and antioxidant properties.”
“Nuts are rich in monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats, and replacement of carbohydrates and animal fat with either unsaturated fats have been shown to reduce all-cause mortality and lethal outcomes among men with non-metastatic prostate cancer,” she said.
She said that the common perception is that eating nuts may increase someone’s weight but they did not observe this in their study, and other large cohort studies did not observe this either. Additionally, even though nuts are high in fats, they mostly consist of unsaturated fats, which are considered healthy.
