POZ Community Forums
Meds, Mind, Body & Benefits => Nutrition & HIV => Topic started by: mark86 on June 16, 2007, 04:51:11 pm
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Hi,
Does anyone eat Brazil nuts to get their intake of Selenium. I have heard you should only eat occassionally but how much? and how occasionally ?
Thanks,
Mark86
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my UK nutritionist advised me that although brazil nuts are indeed naturally high in selenium, they lose a lot once they've been picked, transported and stored.
That's from a post about selenium that you may want to take a look at: http://forums.poz.com/index.php?topic=8559.0
Also do a search for "brazil nuts", it has been discussed before.
Milker.
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Hello,
I know their expensive as all hell !! Not much to the taste of them. In fact, got some right now on the counter top, sitting in a zip lock bag. Every once in a while, will munch on a handful of them. They make me thirsty.
Ray
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I really like them, problem is I can't only eat a handful! And then wind up eatiing the whole damn bag....!
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Also, remember that nuts are high in fat, though "good" fat, so they will go rancid at room temperature. Keeping them in the refrigerator or the freezer in air-tight containers will help them last almost indefinitely.
NIH has an objective write-up on selenium that notes other sources:
http://ods.od.nih.gov/factsheets/selenium.asp (http://ods.od.nih.gov/factsheets/selenium.asp)
My breakfast three-egg turkey scramble with orange bell peppers and garlic puts in the RDA for a non-HIVer mere mortal, but I'll also have a mutil-vitamin twice daily and some beef and tuna or chicken later to pump up the numbers.
Note that, contrary to blather repeated frequently on the internet, selenium is not a substitute anti-retroviral. As the NIH posting indicates, studies show that maintaining healthful selenium levels promotes healthful immune cell production and reduces oxidative stress on the body as a hole. One supplement manufacturer-funded study showed that selenium helped persons with addictions maintain compliance with their ARV dosing schedules, thereby improving HIV viral load and CD4s, but selenium has not been demonstrated to be active on its own against the virus.
Cheers,
David
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Like in all natural products, the concentration of selenium in brazil nuts differs from region to region, from season to season. Thus, although they're generally healthy, it's very difficult to say anything about the selenium dosage you get from eating a bag full of nuts.
This study found selenium concentrations between 3 - 36 ppm:
Selenium content of Brazil nuts from two geographic locations in Brazil (http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6V74-3YMFS82-54&_user=10&_coverDate=02%2F28%2F1995&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&view=c&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=eb68ce7d9f0c6199b8664dfe6aedf7d6)