The benefits and effects of nuts

Our nuts are very popular among people and have high nutritional value, especially for brain health.

Chestnuts: a good tonic for anti-aging and longevity

Chestnuts nourish the kidneys, no doubt about it!

One of my female neighbors came to Beijing with her husband, who was an officer. She has been sick ever since. She holds her chest every day like an ugly fool, and her face is pale and her body is weak.

In the corridor, I always see such a lifeless face, which is really pitiful. So I suggested that she eat chestnuts regularly, preferably raw.

She listened to me and asked her husband to find a way to get the most famous Huairou oil chestnuts in the suburbs of Beijing. She ate them from the autumn when the chestnuts were off the market to the spring of the following year, until she could no longer find fresh chestnuts. Every day, she ate 7 chestnuts, 3 in the morning and 4 in the evening, chewing them raw. After less than a year, her health improved greatly and she felt more energetic. It turned out that chestnuts are extremely rich in energy. They contain unsaturated fatty acids, vitamins and minerals that are not found in many foods. They are a good tonic for anti-aging and longevity.

According to traditional Chinese medicine, chestnuts have the effects of nourishing the kidney and spleen, strengthening the body and bones, benefiting the stomach and calming the liver, etc. It is also called "kidney fruit" by the King of Medicine Sun Simiao. Many people probably don't realize that the vitamin C contained in fresh chestnuts is more than tomatoes, which are recognized to be rich in vitamin C, and more than ten times that of apples.

Chewing - the best way to eat chestnuts

I suggested that my female neighbor eat chestnuts raw. In addition to ensuring that the vitamin C is not destroyed, there is also a very meaningful nutritional tip, that is: the minerals in chestnuts can regulate a variety of physiological functions and are also key elements for synthesizing antioxidant enzymes in the body. After being chewed in the mouth, the chestnut meat is fully in contact with saliva, which can produce more enzymes, which is extremely beneficial to the body's repair.

Su Che, one of the Eight Great Masters of Tang and Song Dynasties, wrote a poem: "As I grow old, I suffer from back and leg pains. The hermit in the mountains takes chestnuts according to the old recipe. When guests come, they tell me about getting up early and staying up late. I swallow the white jade juice three times slowly."

The poem tells the elderly the effective way to use chestnuts to nourish the kidneys: every morning and evening, put fresh chestnuts in your mouth and chew them carefully until your mouth is full of white juice, then swallow them slowly, and you will get a good tonic effect.

The great doctor Sun Simiao, in his book Qianjin Fang·Food Therapy, added the following words when introducing chestnuts: “If eaten raw, it can cure waist and leg diseases.” He emphasized the special usage of “eating chestnuts raw” to treat waist and leg diseases.

Who can make you look young and white-haired? Walnut

Eat walnut kernels to replenish energy

Many years ago, when I was working as an immigration doctor at the Canadian Embassy, I met this old couple with youthful looks. They were both physicists from the Chinese Academy of Sciences. At the age of 86, they were strong and sharp-minded. Even their skin was very smooth and elastic, just like that of young people.

I was very curious and asked them about their beauty secrets.

The old man told me their daily diet without reservation. Among them, there was one food that was different from the others: each person should eat 5 raw walnuts every day, as snacks in the morning and evening.

I know that walnuts are listed as top-grade products in Shennong's Herbal Classics, which can help to lighten the body, improve qi and prolong life if taken for a long time. The Compendium of Materia Medica written by Li Shizhen in the Ming Dynasty also records that walnut kernels "tonify qi and blood, moisten dryness and resolve phlegm, and benefit the gate of life". The fire of the gate of life is the root of the body's yang energy and the source of power for the internal organs and functional activities of the human body. Under normal circumstances, if an old Chinese doctor takes a pulse and gives a code word of "decline of the gate of life", it actually means that the person's vitality is weak or the kidney essence is damaged, the kidney yin and kidney yang are not enough, and the life energy is insufficient. What should we do at this time? Eat walnut kernels!

Look at that elderly couple, both 86 years old, yet they were still able to take an "air taxi" of more than ten hours to go to Canada to attend their grandson's graduation ceremony. The walnut kernels have replenished their life energy so much! It is estimated that living to be a hundred years old is within their reach.

It is not only the Chinese who know the benefits of walnuts. It seems that everyone on earth knows that walnuts are beautiful. Walnuts are known as "Hercules food" abroad. One pound of walnut kernels is equivalent to the nutritional value of five pounds of eggs or nine pounds of milk.

Although walnuts are high in calories, the oils in them are good fats. Its phospholipids have a good health-care effect on brain nerves; unsaturated fatty acids have the effect of preventing and treating arteriosclerosis. Walnut kernels are very rich in zinc, manganese, chromium and other trace elements that are indispensable to the human body, and these are exactly what the human body loses during the aging process.

The American Dietetic Association recommends that people eat walnuts two or three times a week, especially the elderly and menopausal women.

Because the arginine, oleic acid, and antioxidants contained in walnuts are very beneficial for protecting cardiovascular system and preventing coronary heart disease, stroke, Alzheimer's disease, etc. The antioxidants contained in walnut meat are 20 times higher than those in citrus and spinach, 500 times higher than those in carrots, and 60 times higher than those in tomatoes. When people take the antioxidants in walnuts, they can protect their bodies from many diseases.

Eat the walnuts right after they are cracked to get the full energy.

So far, people have known that walnuts contain a large amount of omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids. Eating them regularly can reduce the cholesterol content in the blood and reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease.

Walnuts contain enough energy, but many people don’t like their astringent taste, so they turn to walnut powder that has been degreased and ground into powder. However, this way, they lose all of its benefits.

It is precisely because of its thin, astringent skin that walnuts have medicinal effects, and the extremely useful omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids and various antioxidants are also in the oil. If the valuable oil is extracted and then ground into flour, it will be exposed to the air more often, and all the antioxidants will be wasted.

Therefore, if you really want to replenish the energy of the life gate, it is better to eat and crack the walnuts carefully. Of course, I would recommend that you buy some walnuts that are delicious and easy to peel, such as the "egg-shell walnuts" in the Qinling area of Shaanxi, or the paper-shell walnuts produced in Yunnan and Xinjiang, which are effortless to eat.

Eating fresh walnuts is of course the most nutritious, provided you can get fresh ones. If you can't get fresh ones, drinking walnut juice squeezed from fresh walnuts is also good. However, you must drink those with a recent production date, otherwise, there is no need to drink the sugar and other ingredients in the beverage.

The best brain tonic -- pine nuts

As mentioned before, the ancients told us that walnuts nourish the kidneys and provide life force; almonds nourish the heart and allow energy to flow throughout the body. And there is also a delicacy in the shell that replenishes energy to the brain, the headquarters for energy control in the human body.

Although it is smaller in size, it is full of energy. It is the seed of the pine tree that is unique to Northeast my country and Yunnan Province - pine nuts.

I have a deep impression of pine nuts, not because it is a traditional Chinese medicine, but because six years ago when I participated in the recording of a health program sponsored by South Korea, I witnessed how much Korean culinary gourmets love pine nuts: almost every dish would be garnished with a few plump and lovely pine nuts at the end to make it a perfect dish.

This beautiful old lady who is known as the "Contemporary Dae Jang Geum of Korea" told me that pine nuts are nuts that make people smarter. They not only make people live longer, but also make the skin moisturized. Therefore, she likes to use pine nuts as garnish for dishes.

Yes! When I was a child, people from my mother's hometown in Northeast China would bring some specialties from Changbai Mountain to Kyoto. In addition to the fragrant hazel mushrooms, there were hazelnuts and pine nuts that would leave a lasting fragrance in your mouth. These wild natural snacks from the forest are small in size, but very fragrant. They are much more delicious than the American hazelnuts and Indian pine nuts that we buy in supermarkets now. In recent years, the health benefits of American almonds and macadamia nuts have been hyped up, and in China, it seems that no one pays attention to these small and inconspicuous pine nuts anymore. However, in our neighboring countries, the Japanese and Koreans, how fully they use good things!

I often lament that as Chinese people, we sometimes really don’t take the good things given by nature seriously, and sometimes we waste them wantonly. It’s really a sin, a sin!

It is a high-quality nutritional supplement for the brain, especially suitable for people who overuse their brains. The unsaturated fatty acids contained in pine nuts are the energy food most needed by the brain. Its glutamate content is as high as 16.3%, which can enhance memory. In addition, pine nuts are also very rich in phosphorus and manganese, which are good supplements for the brain and nerves, and also have a good preventive effect on the increasing number of Alzheimer's disease.

For the elderly with constipation, pine nut porridge is a good laxative. According to traditional Chinese medicine, pine nuts have the effects of nourishing yin and moistening dryness, strengthening the body and replenishing deficiency, and are especially suitable for the elderly with physical weakness, constipation and cough.

It is worth mentioning that pine nuts have a mild laxative effect and can be used by children, the elderly and pregnant women. It is a very appropriate gift for children to bring home a bag of pine nuts to show their filial piety to their parents.

Almonds - a God-given anti-cancer drug

Almonds are the fruit of longevity

According to legend, Xin Shixun, a Hanlin scholar in the Ming Dynasty, once went out and stayed overnight at a Taoist temple in Qingcheng Mountain. A Taoist priest taught him a secret recipe for longevity, telling him to eat seven almonds a day. If he persisted in eating them, he would benefit greatly. The Hanlin followed this recipe and persisted until he was old. He was still healthy, sharp-eyed, and quick-witted, and lived a long life.

Folklore is not enough to prove it. However, to this day, people in the longevity areas such as Fiji in the Pacific Ocean, the Hongza tribe in the southern foot of the Himalayas, and Hotan in Xinjiang all use apricots as their main food. The elderly in these places can almost live to over 90 years old, and the incidence of cancer is zero, which is more or less related to their eating apricots as their staple food.

Almonds contain natural anti-cancer active substances, which are only toxic to cancer cells, killing cancer cells or inhibiting their proliferation. Moreover, at therapeutic doses, this substance has no harm to normal cells and healthy cells. This is a natural anti-cancer drug given to us by nature, which is much more advanced than chemotherapy and radiotherapy developed by humans.

Eating almonds may reduce cardiovascular disease risk

The fat energy of almonds is not small, but it will not cause obesity. Its oil has the effect of lowering cholesterol. Among them, the content of monounsaturated fatty acids is as high as 68%. Its function is to maintain the level of high-density lipoprotein cholesterol that is beneficial to the human body and reduce the level of harmful low-density lipoprotein cholesterol, thereby reducing the risk of cardiovascular disease.

Studies have shown that people who eat almonds at least five times a week will reduce their risk of heart disease or coronary heart disease by half. American nutrition experts suggest that people with normal or slightly high cholesterol levels can replace low-nutrient-density foods in their diet with almonds to achieve the goal of controlling or lowering blood cholesterol and maintaining heart health.

If you don't like almonds, you can also drink almond milk. Of course, you should drink "Lulu" made from wild large flat apricots in the mountains of Chengde. This almond milk has been tested for human consumption, and the results show that normal men can reduce serum total cholesterol and triglycerides after drinking this almond milk, and can prevent and treat coronary heart disease and atherosclerosis.

Nutritional research in the West is very lively, and they have come up with all these mysterious numbers, which seem to make sense when listed. However, they are actually far inferior to Chinese medicine philosophers who can summarize the energy of all things in the world with just a few words.

Our famous doctor Sun Simiao has long explained: "Almonds are the fruit of the heart and are good for people with heart disease." The heart that the ancients referred to was the heart and its associated cardiovascular system.

Eat nuts at a good time

Nuts are high in calories and are a good source of energy for manual laborers and mountaineers. When you are tired, eating a small bag of almonds or other nuts is much more useful than chewing a bag of biscuits.

However, for daily consumption, I usually recommend eating them during afternoon tea time. Eating them at this time can not only nourish the brain and replenish energy, but also increase satiety, so that you don't eat too much for dinner after get off work.

If you always like to lean comfortably on the sofa after dinner, watching TV while picking up the box of nuts on the coffee table and eating them endlessly, then even the best fats will bring the burden of weight gain to your body.

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