21 Health Benefits of Pistachios

When you think of super foods, a number of specific items tend to crop up time and time again. These include the likes of kale, blueberries and garlic.

What you might not hear about quite so often is the humble pistachio. But make no mistake! Pistachios are actually very impressive in terms of what they can do for you and certainly rival the other superfoods that seem to have better PR managers.

In this post, we’ll examine a whopping 21 different benefits of pistachios and show how they can improve your hair, your skin and your overall health to a pretty impressive degree. By the end, you might just consider upping your intake!

So what is a pistachio precisely? Known by the names ‘pista’ and ‘pistha pappu’ in their Western Asian home, the pistachio is technically not a nut, but a fruit. That’s your first surprise! Despite this, the hard outer shell of the fruit makes it much more similar to a nut and what you’re actually eating inside is just a yellow colored seed. So now you know!

That seed is where all the goodness lies and as we’ll see in a moment, there are a remarkable number of things that this item can do for you…

1.  Heart Health

First up, pistachios are highly effective at improving your cholesterol levels. This means that they are able to not only increase the good cholesterol (HDL) but also reduce the amount of bad cholesterol called LDL. This is important because it allows blood to flow more easily around the body, less hampered by deposits of fat. On top of this, pistachios can also strengthen the nerves that operate the heart, thereby helping it to beat more strongly and effectively.

On top of this, pistachios also contain a lot of antioxidants which can further help to protect the heart against wear and tear and specifically from damage from free radicals.