Eating nuts as part of a healthy diet can be good for your heart. Nuts, which contain unsaturated fatty acids and other nutrients, are a great snack food, too. They're inexpensive, easy to store and easy to take with you to work or school.

The type of nut you eat isn't that important, although some nuts have more heart-healthy nutrients and fats than do others. Almost every type of nut has a lot of nutrition packed into a tiny package. If you have heart disease, eating nuts instead of a less healthy snack can help you more easily follow a heart-healthy diet.

Most studies on people who eat nuts as part of a heart-healthy diet have found that nuts lower the LDL, low-density lipoprotein or "bad," cholesterol level in the blood. High LDL is one of the primary causes of heart disease, so nuts' ability to lower LDL cholesterol seems to be quite beneficial. Eating nuts reduces your risk of developing blood clots that can cause a fatal heart attack. Nuts also improve the health of the lining of your arteries.

 

From: The Mayo Clinic