Evidence Increases That Diet Plays a Role In Brain Health
By Wendy J. Meyeroff
THE ERICKSON TRIBUNE
There has been speculation about whether certain nutritional elements can prevent or at least delay the onset of Alzheimer’s disease. A team at Columbia University Medical Center in New York has found evidence that following a Mediterranean-style diet might have a positive impact on fighting Alzheimer’s disease. While still preliminary, results are interesting.
The Alzheimer’s Association says finding a treatment that could delay the disease’s onset could reduce the number of people with Alzheimer’s by 50 percent within 50 years. The organization estimates there are 4.5 million people affected by Alzheimer’s, and is expected to rise to 16 million by 2050.
Why Look at Diet?
"Studies indicate that if you have a lot of vascular risks—the things that increase your chances of heart disease—you also have a higher risk of cognitive decline. Smoking, inactive lifestyle, and high blood pressure, for example, affect your heart and your brain," says Marilyn Albert, M.D., a professor of neurology at Johns Hopkins Medical Center in Maryland.
One of the major recommendations doctors make for fighting heart diseases: change your diet. (See the high blood pressure article on this page.) So why shouldn’t a heart-healthy diet have brain benefits too?
"Science has been looking at foods in isolation: one study looks at vitamin C’s effect on Alzheimer’s, another looks at fish’s impact, and so on. But we don’t eat things in isolation, so we wanted a study that looked at nutritional interactions," says Nikos Scarmeas, M.D., assistant professor of neurology at Columbia University Medical Center in New York.
Scarmeas led a study of 2,258 older people (average age 77) for an average of four years, though some were followed as long as 14 years. None of them had Alzheimer’s at the outset. Among people with the highest adherence to this "good" diet, the risk of Alzheimer’s was 40 percent lower than those with the lowest adherence.