Now, if you’re looking for a new snack to indulge in, look no further than walnuts. They’re versatile, delicious, and incredibly nutritious. First of all, walnuts have the highest plant protein content of all the nut choices. If you’re looking to get plant protein in your diet, look no further than walnuts.
Walnuts contain phenomenal substances called polyamines, which I write about in my books. What in the world are polyamines? Well, polyamines have been shown to improve your overall health, health span, and longevity in multiple studies. If you’ve read my most recent two books, The Energy Paradox and Unlocking the Keto Code, you know that polyamines are critical for uncoupling your mitochondria. Uncoupling your mitochondria results in these little workhorses of energy production working better and not damaging themselves. So, polyamines are the way to go.
Let me give you an example: one study showed that eating pistachios, walnuts, and almonds (please skin them) increases your level of butyrate-producing bacteria, with walnuts and pistachios beating almonds in a landslide. Why would you want to produce butyrate-producing bacteria? If you’ve read my books, you know that butyrate is a short-chain fatty acid. Butyrate does two remarkable things: the cells that line our colon (large intestine) get about 90 percent of their entire energy supply from butyrate, and butyrate also acts as a substrate for producing ketones. Additionally, butyrate has phenomenal anti-cancer properties and is one of the preferred substances for your brain to use. This all sounds like a really good thing.
The problem is, most of us don’t eat the foods that feed the butyrate-producing bacteria what they need to produce butyrate. It just so happens that walnuts and pistachios are two of the best ways to give your gut buddies what they need to produce butyrate. Let me give you another example: mice that were fed walnuts had less than half as many tumors in their colons compared to mice that were not fed nuts. Since the wall of your gut requires butyrate to be healthy, it stands to reason that the more butyrate those cells get, the healthier they are. Conversely, the less butyrate they get, the more likely they are to turn into mischievous cells. Additionally, butyrate has tremendous anti-cancer properties. It’s a win-win: you help the healthy cells stay healthy and suppress any cancer cells.
To find out exactly why that worked, researchers looked at the mice’s fecal samples and examined the bacteria living in their intestinal tracts. They found that the gut microbiome of the mice that had eaten walnuts was similar to one another and actually favored bacterial communities that supported colon health. In other words, the walnuts gave the right bacteria the things they needed to keep the colon healthy.
Want more proof of how great walnuts are? Many of you have heard me talk about the PREDIMED study from Spain. The PREDIMED study was a four-year study designed to look at adults with known coronary artery disease. They took 447 adults and assigned them to one of three diet groups: one group was given a liter of olive oil per week (they had to bring their olive oil container back to the clinic once a week and refill it), another group ate 30 grams of walnuts per day (equivalent to the amount of calories they would have gotten in olive oil), while the third group followed a low-fat diet with the same number of calories.
Brain function tests were done at the start of this study and at the end. What was shocking was that the low-fat group experienced a significant reduction in memory and cognition. In a way, that’s not surprising because these people started the study at age 65 and ended at 69, so their memory and cognition worsened with age. However, the walnut-eating group showed significant improvements in memory, while the olive oil group experienced significantly improved overall cognitive function.
The point is that good things happen when you give bacteria the foods they want to eat. When you give bacteria the ability to make butyrate and consume polyamine-containing foods like walnuts, all of these things go directly to the source of your long-term health span and brain function. Why wouldn’t you want to do that? It’s a prescription that, quite frankly, no doctor would think about giving you for brain health, but it will go much farther than any prescription medication your doctor could prescribe for you to improve your brain health.
The more we realize the importance of these compounds in everyday foods like walnuts, which benefit us directly because of their polyphenol and polyamine content, the more we understand that compounds and fats in foods like walnuts or pistachios are what our gut bacteria—the good gut buddies—need to thrive. We are a symbiotic organism with a massive tropical rainforest of at least 10,000 different species of bacteria, fungi, parasites, and worms living inside us. Thanks to the Human Microbiome Project, we are beginning to understand why this tropical rainforest is so important to our overall health.
The new book I’m writing delves even deeper into what’s called the trans-Kingdom communication between these species and us. Believe me, we need them and need to feed them what they want to eat. Walnuts are one of the best things you can do for this. I recommend you have about half a cup of walnuts every day. Why not have more? Quite frankly, if you want to eat more, you may put on some weight. I have patients who lose too much weight on my program, and I found that increasing nut consumption stops that weight loss. If you want to gain weight and are having trouble, look to nuts as a way to do that.
Should you use walnut oil? Walnut oil is good for flavoring, but what you’re really looking for is the whole package in the walnuts that have the fiber and polyamines that feed your gut buddies. One word of caution: I have a few female patients who feel like they get burns on the inside of their mouth and tongue due to the tannins in walnuts. If that’s the case, soak your walnuts to remove the tannins. Soaked walnuts are available in Whole Foods and other health food stores, or you can buy them online. If you have a problem with that funny feeling in your mouth after eating walnuts, buy soaked walnuts and you’ll be fine.
Some people say walnuts just don’t do it for them and they’d rather have something else. That’s boring. There are so many walnut recipes in my books, such as the walnut bread in The Plant Paradox, the walnut blue cheese dressing in The Longevity Paradox, the walnut lentil veggie burgers or meatballs in The Longevity Paradox, and the walnut and nutmeg horchata in The Longevity Paradox. These are great ways to get more walnuts into your diet and keep your gut buddies happy.
You’re definitely going to want to see this: just adding a teaspoon of the right spice can do a whole lot for your health.