Food For Thought: Eat Right to Save Your Brain

Hello Everyone:

Here is more great info on how food impacts our brain health and our ability to avoid dementia.

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/article-abstract/2293082

Conclusions and Relevance: In an older population, a Mediterranean diet supplemented with olive oil or nuts was associated with improved composite measures of cognitive function.

While this study looked at our older population, the same holds true for any age. But what is the real traditional Mediterranean Diet?

Mediterranean Diet?

• The more traditional Mediterranean diet (MedDiet) associated with health improvements is characterized by:

– Limited intake of animal-derived and processed foods

– Consumption of a variety of plant-based foods (fruit, vegetables, some breads, and other whole-    grain cereals, pulses, nuts, and seeds), wine, and olive oil (as the main source of lipids).

– Am J Clin Nutr 2013;97:369–76.

– Red meat only a few times per month

– Fish once or twice per week

– The Mediterranean dietary pattern is not as strict in guidelines relative to autoimmune diets and those with other nutritional considerations, such as those requiring low oxalate or low sulfur or specific food allergies…and these will require individualized tweaks, but for most of us, the Med Diet is the place to start.

  - Ageing Research Reviews 31 (2016) 80–92

Bottom Line: Invest in reading about how to consume a food pattern associated with the best health benefits overall. Right now, looking at the available science, it appears that the MedDiet is optimal for most of us. The book by Valter Longo, PhD, is the best one out there right now for two reasons: He gets the food part right, plus he adds periods of intermittent fasting to really supercharge this food plan. His book is “The Longevity Diet” and I highly recommend it.