Researchers may have cracked a secret to naturally lowering cholesterol. It may sound nutty, but one side effect of eating walnuts is the tendency to be psyched about eating healthier the rest of the time.

Previous studies have found a link between nuts and heart health, attributed to nuts being a rich source for vitamin E, folate, and essential fatty acids. But this latest study found that eating walnuts simply led people to make smarter diet choices.

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Researchers at Yale University divided 112 people at high risk of diabetes into two groups — half who were counseled on nutrition and half who weren't.

Then they randomly chose people from both groups and had them add two ounces of walnuts to their daily diets for six month. After that, they were told not to eat walnuts for six months.

What they found was that people who'd eaten the walnuts made healthier diet choices afterwards regardless of whether they were getting nutrition advice or not. The people who'd eaten walnuts for six months, showed better cholesterol results at the end of the year-long study.

"So even if you don't talk to people about [making room in their diet] for these calories, they seem to do pretty well," Dr. David Katz, the lead author of the study, told Live Science.

Researchers say their findings warrant further studies with more diverse groups to better gauge the benefits of walnuts.

The results were published in the journal BMJ Open Diabetes Research & Care in November.

Photo: fred_v, CC