The Benefits of Pine Nut Oil

Pine nuts, also commonly called Indian nuts, are small seeds that comes from pine trees. You probably now that pine nuts are edible and you may think of pesto sauce. Did you know that certain types of pine nuts, however, can actually be very beneficial for your health?

Korean pine nuts, for example, contain a unique fatty acid which makes counting calories easier. Pine nuts can even be very helpful when it comes to losing weight. How? Eating pine nuts can make you less hungry, meaning you'll want to eat less food.

Are you interested in learning more about the wonderful world of pine nut oil?

What are pine nuts?

When most of us think of pine nut recipes, our minds go to pesto, made from ground pine nuts, basil, and olive oil—hardly a diet food. Korean pine nuts, however, contain a unique fatty acid that makes counting calories easier.

Pine nuts are the edible seeds produced by pine trees. All pine nuts are edible, but only about twenty species of pines produce seeds that are large enough to be valuable as food.

The familiar Italian recipes for pesto are based on pine nuts harvested from the stone pine, which has been cultivated for its nuts for at least 5,000 years. In the United States, the Hopi, Shoshone, Paiute, and Washoe tribes have traditionally harvested the nuts of the pinyon pine.

These nuts have entered American cuisine as a toasted addition to rice and pasta dishes. Because they are large and easy to shell, they are extremely popular and valuable wild-crafted crop in the western United States. For a time, the Trading Post system on some American Indian reservations even used them as a form of money.
 

The only nuts that contain the pine nut oil that reduces appetite come from Asia

The pine nuts of medicinal significance, however, are the pine nuts eaten in Asia. Afghanistan is the most importance source of the nuts of the "Korean pine" that appear in Chinese cuisine. While other kinds of pine nuts are elongated and cylindrical, Korean pine nuts (sometimes mislabeled as "Chinese" pine nuts) are nubby, like kernels of corn. These nuts are also the source of a unique fatty acid called pinolenic acid.

Methods used in harvesting pine nuts make a huge difference in their nutritional value. Unshelled pine nuts keep for months or years in the freezer. Shelled pine nuts can go rancid in just a few days if exposed to heat or humidity. Only Korean pine nuts contain the pinolenic acid that has an effect on appetite control.

Hormones ion pine nuts that help you feel full

The pinolenic acid in pine nut oil helps dieter eat less by affecting two important hormones. These are cholecystokinin (abbreviated CCK) and glucagon-like peptide-1 (abbreviated GLP-1).

CCK is the hormone that makes comfort food comforting. When a meal that is partially digested from foods rich in fat and proteins leaves the stomach to enter the small intestine, the duodenum, which is the first part of the small intestine to receive food, secretes CCK.

CCK sends a signal to the gallbladder to release bile to dissolve fat and keep it from "floating" in the mass of digested food. It also triggers the release of pancreatic enzymes. CCK slows down the entry of food going into top of the small intestine, keeping it in the stomach. This leads to comfortably feeling full.

The pinolenic acid in pine nut oil also activates GLP-1. This hormone is produced in the ileus, a section of the small intestine further away from the stomach than the duodenum. The digested food that gets away from the duodenum is stopped at the ileus. This slows down digestion of food even more, and helps the user of pine nut oil to feel even fuller.

 

Does pine nut oil help women lose weight?

The first reports of controlled scientific studies of the benefits of pine nut oil in weight loss appeared in 2006.

Scientists gave eighteen overweight, post-menopausal female volunteers either pine nut oil or olive oil plus a light breakfast, calculated to provide a minimum of calories. The scientists then drew blood samples to measure CCK and GLP-1 and also asked the women how hungry they were.

Although "hunger" is difficult to measure, the results of the experiment were very clear. Women who took pine nut oil were 36 per cent less hungry than women who were given the placebo. Objectively, the women who took pine nut oil with their low-calorie breakfast had higher bloodstream concentrations of CCK and GLP-1.

The significance of calorie reduction in losing weight

Pine nut oil is not a fat-burner. It is an appetite suppressant. Losing weight by consuming fewer calories rather than by burning more calories is of great benefit to overall health.

Medical researchers writing for the Journal of the American Medical Association followed volunteers who succeeded at calorie restriction for 26 weeks. The scientists measured a number of biochemical markers of aging, such as blood sugar levels, insulin levels, DHEA, and core body temperature, and well as weight loss.

As many other scientific studies have also found, exercising more does very little to help lose weight. In this study, volunteers who exercised to burn more fat lost no weight, even at the end of six months. Calorie restriction with exercise and calorie restriction without exercise led to about 10 per cent weight loss with about 25 per cent reduction in body fat. Weight loss, however, is only part of the story.

When people eat less, their bodies do not require as much insulin. In a sense, eating less makes it easier to continue eating less.

People who try to lose weight by exercise need more insulin to transport more sugars released from the carbohydrates they eat (and also, many people will be surprised to learn, from protein, about 28 to 35 per cent of all protein eventually converted to glucose).

When cells in muscles, the liver, and fat are exposed to high levels of blood sugar after a meal, they protect themselves by becoming "resistant" to the ability of insulin to transport sugar out of the bloodstream. This keeps them from being overrun by sugar that then would have to be burned with the production of toxic free radicals.

Even if blood sugar levels are not high, just having more insulin in the bloodstream also causes cells to become resistant to insulin, at least as far as its ability to transport sugar is concerned.

Insulin not only transports sugar, it also transports fat. Cells become sugar-resistant, but not fat-resistant. When people attempting to lose weight only exercise more, cells become more and more resistant to receiving glucose sugar, but they absorb more and more fat. As soon as the fat is burned, it is replaced. The only way to lose fat is to eat less.
 

Pinolenic acid in pine nut oil helps dieters eat less

Pinolenic acid from Korean pine nuts really works in weight loss. It is safe. It is effective. It helps adults over 50 lose weight by increasing feelings of a full stomach and by providing more satisfaction from less food. By safely stimulating the release of the appetite-control hormones CCK and GLP-1, taking pine nut oil can suppress the feelings of hunger and deprivation that so often sabotage calorie-restricted weight-loss efforts.