Heart-Healthy Nuts to Add to Your Diet

If you’re trying to follow a heart–healthy diet, some of the best things you can add to it are nuts. Almost all nuts are packed with nutrients for a healthy heart, like vitamin E, omega-3 fatty acids, fiber and unsaturated fats. Heart-healthy nuts may help lower your cholesterol, get rid of inflammation, improve blood vessel health and lower your risk of heart disease.

Best of all, there are so many great ways to eat them. You can use nuts as snacks, add them to salads, eat them in nut butter form, mix them into yogurt or add them to your diet any way you see fit. But the most important thing is that you eat them. Here’s why.

Research on how nuts affect your health shows that eating them frequently can positively affect your heart. In addition to inflammation associated with heart disease and diabetes, other health benefits of nuts include:

Improved artery health

Decreased risk of blood clots

Lower risk of high blood pressure

Reduced cholesterol levels, specifically your low-density lipoprotein (LDL, or “bad”) cholesterol and triglycerides

One drawback is that nuts tend to be high in calories, which can contribute to weight gain, so it’s important to limit your portions. Adults can eat four to six servings of unsalted nuts in a week. A healthy portion size is about 1.5 ounces of whole nuts or two tablespoons of nut butter.