You already know that eating certain foods can help you lose weight and lower the risk of diabetes and heart disease, but if you follow a healthy diet, it can also keep your brain sharp. The foods you eat affect neurological health in many ways – including the effect on insulin resistance, detoxification and systemic inflammation – and produce critical vitamins, says Dale E. Bredesen, MD, a neurologist and author of the book. The end of the Alzheimer’s program, which contains an entire section dedicated to foods that help prevent cognitive decline. The trick is to find an eating style that optimizes your brain power and is sustainable.
Scientists are working hard to solve this puzzle and discover how we can use nutrition to improve our cognition. A 2015 study published in Alzheimer’s and dementia found that the MIND diet can reset time at your cognitive age of 7½ years. Short for Mediterranean DASH intervention for neurodegenerative retardation, the MIND diet combines the best of the Mediterranean and DASH diets, encompassing the parts of each associated with dementia protection. “Good fats, such as olive oil and vegetables (which include high folate and crosses for detoxification), are brain-healthy components of the Mediterranean diet,” says Dr. Bredesen. “Meanwhile, vegetables and game-caught fish with little mercury are brain-healthy components of the DASH diet.
The research team behind the 2015 study followed an average of 4 1⁄2 years over 900 men and women aged 58 to 98 years. They assessed their diet with detailed food questionnaires and tested their cognitive function annually. They achieved the participants’ diets by matching the eating patterns in the Mediterranean, DASH or MIND. The DASH diet reduced the risk of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) by 39%, the MIND diet by 53% and the Mediterranean diet by 54%. But hold on – if participants followed the diets moderately well, rather than literally speaking, only the MIND diet yielded significant results. This reduced the AD risk by 53% in those who followed it very closely, and by 35% in those who followed it fairly well. What this means is that strict Adherence to the DASH and Mediterranean diets may reduce AD risk, but it may also mild adhering to the MIND diet.
It is noteworthy that those with the highest MIND diet ate less than once a week cheese and fried or fast food, less than four times a week red meat and less than five times a week desserts, pastries or sweets. . They also use less than a tablespoon of butter or margarine per day, making olive oil the main source of fat. Translation: It is not enough to eat brain-friendly foods; to lower your AD risk, it is also necessary to limit these less healthy groups.
“Several trials are currently underway to test the impact of MIND diet on cognitive decline and other structural changes in the brain after 60 years in 604 adults,” says Christy C. Tangney, Ph.D., CNS, FACN, professor in the Department of Clinical Nutrition at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago and co-author of the 2015 study. “We will learn a lot more from this trial about the role that this diet plan plays in brain health. The MIND diet is also one of the four lifestyle approaches being tested in another ongoing clinical trial, known as US Pointer (US study to protect brain health through lifestyle interventions to reduce the risk) I’m working on. ‘
Dr. Bredesen recommends that you follow a diet that supports ketosis, which according to studies can increase cognition. Its KetoFlex 12/3 diet with lots of carbohydrates is mainly plant-based and requires you to eat all your food within a 12-hour window every day and stop eating three hours before going to bed. If this sounds like too much to you, do everything you can to limit your intake of processed foods, red meat and added sugar while prioritizing brain-healthy foods. Pair the stars below each day with one serving of vegetables of your choice, and you’re on your way to better brain power.