Emerging research from university of California has pointed out that Almonds are a must in daily skin care routine. Almonds are counted amongst one of the best tips for healthy aging, that help to improve measures of wrinkle width and severity in postmenopausal women.
This first of its kind study was funded by the Almond Board of California examining almonds’ effects on skin health. The controlled trial was of 16 weeks where 28 healthy postmenopausal women with Fitzpatrick skin type 1 or 2 (characterized by increased tendency to burn with sun exposure) were randomly assigned to one of two groups.
The intervention group had women who ate almonds as a snack (20% of their total daily calorie intake) and the controlled group ate a nut-free snack like a cereal bar, granola bar (also accounting for 20% of calories). Other than these snacks all the participants ate their regular diets and consumed no nuts or nut-containing products.
At the start of the study, skin assessments were made followed by assessments at 4 weeks, 8 weeks, 12 weeks and 16 weeks. During these visits the facial wrinkles were assessed using high-resolution facial imaging and validated 3-D facial modeling and measurement.
Raja Sivamani, MD MS AP, integrative dermatologist and lead researcher said on the study that the high resolution cameras allowed for 3-D reconstruction of any wrinkles to be mapped for their key characteristics of width and severity and this severity score is a calculation of the depth and length of a wrinkle.
At the end of the study at 16 weeks the photographic image analysis showed statistically significant improvements for participants in the almond snack group compared to the control group (P<0.02) with wrinkle width decreased by 10% and the wrinkle severity decreased by 9%. A follow up study of a larger and longer term is underway.