What Walnuts and Salmon Oil Have in Common

If you knew that by eating a handful of delicious nuts each day, you could dramatically decrease your odds of developing breast cancer, you would be pounding those delicious bites. Well, it is time to get out the nutcracker, because studies conducted at the Marshall University School of Medicine indicate that not only do walnuts keep you looking young – they keep you from getting sick as well.

Researchers used mice that were already prone to cancer (much like you, if you have a family history of cancer) to test the hypothesis that walnuts could help prevent cancer. These mice were actually guaranteed to develop cancer in their lifetimes to insure that the test would accurately determine the impact of the walnuts rather than leaving the cancer to chance. In the mice who did not receive a daily dose of walnuts, 100 percent of the mice had developed tumors by the age of five months. However, the mice in the group that was eating walnuts developed smaller tumors, fewer tumors and in some cases did not develop them at all.

But what about walnuts makes them so special? The same thing, it turns out, that makes salmon oil supplements so desirable: omega 3 fatty acids. In fact, just to check and make sure, the same researchers simply enhanced the mice´s diets with omega 3 fatty acids rather than walnuts. While it was not quite as effective as consuming the whole nut, it did reduce cancer incidents significantly. Fortunately, there is no reason to let your walnuts and your salmon oil preclude each other. Instead, have a healthy handful of walnuts with your daily fish oil supplement, and rest assured that you are taking the right steps to keep yourself healthy.