 The shocking benefits of eating walnuts every day for 30 days. 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 that I write about in my books called polyamines. What in the world are polyamines? Well, polyamines have been shown to actually improve your overall health, your overall health span, and your overall longevity in multiple studies. Polyamines, if you've read my most recent two books, The Energy Paradox and Unlocking the Keto Code, are some of those substances that are critical for uncoupling your mitochondria. And if you've been paying attention, uncoupling your mitochondria results in your mitochondria, those 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 please, increases your level of butyrate producing bacteria with walnuts and pistachios beating almonds in a landslide. Now why in the world would you want to produce butyrate producing bacteria? Well, again, if you've read my books, you know that butyrate is a short chain fatty acid. And butyrate in particular does two remarkable things. The cells that line our colon, our large intestine, actually get about 90% of their entire energy supply food from butyrate. They are dependent on butyrate for their livelihood. Secondly, we now know that butyrate is absorbed through our gut and acts very much as a substrate for producing ketones. But butyrate also has phenomenal anti-cancer properties. And butyrate is one of the preferred substances for your brain to use. All of this 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. And it just so happens that walnuts and pistachios are two of the best ways to give your gut buddies the things they need to produce butyrate. So let me give you another example. Mice that were fed walnuts had less than half as many tumors in their colons than mice that were not fed nuts. Again, since the wall of your gut requires butyrate to be healthy, it stands to reason that the more butyrate those cells get, the more normal they are. And the less butyrate they get, the more likely they are to turn into mischievous cells. Secondly, remember that butyrate in itself has tremendous anti-cancer properties. And so it's a win-win. You help the healthy cells be healthy and you suppress any cancer cells. And that's exactly what they found out. To find out exactly why that work the researchers looked at the mice fecal samples and examined the bacteria living in their intestinal tract. They found that the gut microbiome of the mice that eat walnuts were 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 one more proof of how great walnuts are? Many of you have heard me talk about the Predomet study from Spain. The Predomet study was a four-year study designed to look at adults with known coronary artery disease. And they took 447 adults and they were assigned to one of three diet groups. One you've heard me talk about they were 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. Well the third group was put on the exact same number of calories but they followed a low fat diet. So they did brain function tests at the start of this study and then they did brain function tests at the end of this study. What was shocking was the low fat group experienced a significant reduction in memory and cognition. Now in a way that's not surprising because these people started the study at age 65 and they're now 69 so they got older and yeah okay their memory and cognition got worse. But the walnut eating group showed significant improvements in memory while the olive oil group experienced significantly improved overall cognitive function. So the point of all this is that good things happen when you give the bacteria the foods they want to eat when you give bacteria the ability to make butyrate when you consume polyamine containing foods like walnuts all of these things go kind of direct to the source of your long-term health span and your long-term brain function and 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 that prescription is going to go much farther than anything any prescription medication that your doctor would prescribe for you to improve your brain health. The more we begin to realize the importance of these compounds in everyday foods like walnuts that not only may benefit us directly because of their polyphenol content because of their polyamine content but now more than ever with each passing day we're beginning to realize that it's the compounds and fats in things like walnuts or pistachios that our gut bacteria the good gut buddies actually need to thrive number one and to produce these beneficial compounds that in turn we need for our colon health for our brain health and so we are I'll tell you this over and over and over again we are a symbiotic organism where we have a huge massive tropical rainforest living inside of us that should have at least 10,000 different species of bacteria fungi of parasites of worms all this teeming tropical rainforest and we're beginning to now because of the human microbiome project pick apart why this tropical rainforest is so important to our overall health and the new book that I'm writing right now dives really even deeper into this what is called the trans kingdom communication between these species and us and believe me we need them and we need to feed them what they want to eat and walnuts are one of the best things that you can do so grab yourself a handful of walnuts every day I recommend you have about a half a cup that's going to be the thing to do why not have more well quite frankly if you want to eat more the odds are you may put on some weight I have a number of patients who lose too much weight on my program and I found that one of the ways to stop that weight loss is to just increase the nut consumption and so if you want to gain weight you have trouble gaining weight look to nuts as a way to do that should you use walnut oil well quite frankly walnut oil is good stuff and it's great for flavoring but what you're really looking for is the whole package in the walnuts that has the fiber and the polyamines that feed your gut buddies now one word to the wise I have a few female patients who because of the tannins in walnuts feel like they get burns on the inside of their mouth and tongue and if that's the case one of the things you can do is soak your walnuts which will remove the tannins soaked walnuts are available you know you can find them in whole foods and other health food stores you can buy them on the internet so if you've got a problem with that funny feeling in your mouth after eating walnuts buy soaked walnuts and you'll be fine now some people say eh walnuts just don't do it for me I'd rather have something else that's boring there are so many walnut recipes that I've got 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 all of these are great ways to get more walnuts into you and to keep your gut buddies happy you're definitely going to want to see this one that's right just adding a teaspoon of the right spice you can do a whole lot for your health