Stress less with daily dose of walnuts
Being in college may be portrayed as a carefree time for fun and games away from parents’ critical gaze, but, in truth, it is relentlessly stressful. In fact, almost 88 percent of college kids say they are stressed — especially about exams, student loans, academic performance and social life. And virtually all of them say that stress affects their mental health.
How do they cope? One survey of around 1,000 college students found that sleeping was the No. 1 way. Exercising, eating and drinking alcohol, meditating and ignoring stress rounded out the students’ favorite coping mechanisms.
Bravo for exercising and meditating! Study after study shows exercise and meditation dispel stress hormones, change your self-image, improve sleep and increases feel-good neurotransmitters like serotonin. Excess sleep — as opposed to healthful, restorative sleep — can fuel depression and make it harder to cope. And overeating and excess alcohol are shortcuts to the blues.
If you want a positive stress-buster, you can start with walnuts. A study published in Nutrients found that eating half a cup of walnuts a day — at the beginning of a semester, during exams, and two weeks after exams — improved the students’ self-reported measures of mental health, their gut microbial diversity (the researchers checked) and sleep quality.
Walnuts convey these benefits because they are protein-rich and loaded with omega-3 fatty acids and phytochemicals that protect against premature aging, inflammation and metabolic syndrome.
Beating childhood diabetes
More than 283,000 young
Americans have diabetes and more than 77 percent of kids aged 18 and younger have obesity when they are diagnosed with diabetes. And, in addition to diabetes and obesity, many of these kids also contend with associated health challenges, such as nonalcoholic fatty liver disease, high LDL and apolipoprotein B levels, polycystic ovary syndrome and kidney problems.
The childhood obesity crisis in America is so severe that recently the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention expanded its body max index charts to offer more levels for children and teens — up to a BMI of 60.
If you’re a parent with a child who has obesity — or is even overweight — it’s vital that you adopt diabetes-fighting, healthy weight habits for your child … and for yourself. And please have your child checked for prediabetes and diabetes.