Brain Foods to Incorporate Into Your Diet – Home Care Powered By AUAF
Food for Thought: Key Diet Choices to Combat Cognitive Decline
What you eat when you’re young and middle-aged can significantly affect how your brain functions as you age, according to new research.
Diet Quality and Cognitive Health
After age 65, cognitive performance often begins to decline, with severe conditions like dementia further exacerbating these effects. Previous studies have shown that maintaining a healthy diet in your 60s and 70s can help stave off age-related cognitive decline. However, fewer studies have examined how lifelong eating habits impact cognitive aging.
In a groundbreaking study, researchers from Tufts University analyzed data collected from over 3,000 individuals for nearly seven decades. They aimed to determine how eating patterns from age 4 to 70 affect cognitive abilities later in life.
A stock photo shows three generations eating together. A new study has found that how we eat throughout our lives can impact our cognitive health as we age. CHOREOGRAPH/GETTY
High-quality diets, as defined by the 2020 to 2025 Dietary Guidelines for Americans, are rich in fruits, vegetables, legumes, and whole grains while being low in sodium, added sugars, and refined grains.
Long-Term Dietary Impact
The research found a clear association between dietary quality and cognitive ability in later life. Only 8 percent of those with low-quality diets maintained high cognitive abilities into their 70s. In contrast, only about 7 percent of those with high-quality diets experienced significant cognitive decline compared with their peers.
“These initial findings generally support current public health guidance that it is important to establish healthy dietary patterns early in life to support and maintain health throughout life,” said Kelly Cara, a recent graduate of the Gerald J. and Dorothy R. Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University.
“Our findings also provide new evidence suggesting that improvements to dietary patterns up to midlife may influence cognitive performance and help mitigate, or lessen, cognitive decline in later years,” Cara added.
Mechanisms Behind Dietary Benefits
The exact mechanisms behind these associations remain unclear. However, researchers suggest that healthy eating, particularly a diet rich in plant-based foods, antioxidants, and unsaturated fats, can support brain health. This diet can reduce damage caused by toxic metabolic byproducts and improve blood flow to the brain.
While the study is observational and involved Caucasian individuals living in the U.K., it is the first to track diet and cognitive ability throughout the lifespan. The findings may help inform early intervention strategies and diagnoses in the future.
Cara will present this research at NUTRITION 2024, the annual meeting of the American Society for Nutrition in Chicago, on Monday, July 1.
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