Walnut consumption shown to reduce academic stress in university students

The consumption of walnuts was shown to reduce academic stress and bolster mental health among university students, especially women, researchers reported in Nutrients.

“Poorer mental health is common in undergraduate students due to academic stress. An interplay between stress and diet exists, with stress influencing food choices,” Mauritz F. Herselman, a PhD candidate at the University of South Australia, and colleagues wrote.

Herselman and colleagues sought to assess the effects of academic stress and daily walnut consumption in university students on mental health, biochemical markers of general health and gut microbiota.

A total of 80 students were split into treatment and control groups and assessed at three intervals — at the beginning of the semester, during periods of exam and then 2 weeks after exams. Those in the treatment group were given approximately 56 grams of walnuts to eat daily for 16 weeks over the course of the three intervals.

“We found that those who consumed about half a cup of walnuts every day showed improvements in self-reported mental health indicators,” Herselman said in a press release from the university. “Walnut consumers also showed improved metabolic biomarkers and overall sleep quality in the longer term.”

Most study participants were women (75%), who had lower gut microbiota diversity because of academic stress and experienced improvement with walnut consumption. The authors reported the effects of academic stress or walnut consumption in male participants could not be established, due to the small number of participants.

“Due to fewer numbers of males in the study, more research is needed to establish sex-dependent effects of walnuts and academic stress in university students. It’s also possible that a placebo effect might have come into play as this was not a blind study,” Larisa Bobrovskaya, PhD, study co-author and associate professor at the university, said in the release.

Reference:

Walnuts: the new brain food for stressed university students. https://www.unisa.edu.au/media-centre/Releases/2022/walnuts-the-new-brain-food-for-stressed-university-students/. Published Dec. 16, 2022. Accessed Dec. 16, 2022.