Western lifestyle diseases include cognitive degeneration. It is often assumed that it is common to experience such age related cognitive decline. However, studies on populations consuming traditional Mediterranean foods show that this is not the case, and suggest that diet plays an important role in preventing age related mental deterioration (here). Until recently the emphasis in research was to study isolated nutrients in order to assess their ability to prevent or reverse age related cognitive decline. However, more recently, researchers have been more open to testing whole diets in this regard. The benefits of the Mediterranean diet are well known as they have been widely reported, but other traditional diets such as the Okinawan and the Norwegian show similar effects. Researchers have also created diets based on traditional eating practices in order to be able to confer the health benefits of traditional diets to those who currently consume Western food, and these include diets such as DASH (dietary approaches to stop hypertension).
Researchers have investigated the ability of high quality diets to protect from age related cognitive decline. For example, in ones study1, researchers examines associations between adherence scores to the Mediterranean and DASH diets with age related cognitive decline in a prospective study (a study that follows a group of people over time) that included 3831 men and women aged over 65 years. The cognitive function of the subjects was performed using the Modified Mini-Mental State Examination 4 times over an 11 year period. Computer models were used to assess the closeness of the diets of the subject with the classic Mediterranean and research based DASH diets. The results showed that higher scores relating to closer adherence to the two diets was associated with a higher score on the cognitive tests. Those in the groups that were highest in the DASH and Mediterranean scores averaged 0.97 and 0.94 points higher, respectively, when compared to those in the groups with the lowest scores (significant improvements).
Therefore higher adherence to the DASH and Mediterranean diets may be associated with higher levels of mental function in elderly men and women and this may prevent age related cognitive decline. The authors noted that high quality foods such as nuts, legumes and whole grains were all positively associated with higher cognitive function. This is not surprising as diets that emphasise these foods are plant based diets that are considered of high quality and such diets are known to confer wide ranging health benefits. In particular, such high quality diets are associated with a reduction in systemic inflammation. As inflammation is associated with oxidative stress and oxidative stress is in turn associated with disease, it may be that traditional plant based diets such as the Mediterranean diet and more modern diets based on similar eating principles (such as DASH) are protective for this reason. This likely relates to the antioxidant phytochemicals within the plants as well as the high amounts of dietary fibre.
Dr Robert Barrington’s Nutritional Recommendations: High quality diets are protective of disease. High quality diets emphasise whole grains, whole plant based foods, unrefined unprocessed foods, high quality protein devoid of pesticides and chemicals with high amounts of phytonutrient fruits and vegetables. High quality diets are devoid of metabolic poisons such as refined crystallised fructose, trans fatty acids and oxidised fats.
RdB
