From: hound23x@gmail.com   
      
   New MIND diet may significantly protect against Alzheimer's disease    
      
      
        
   Mar 17, 2015    
      
   Diagram of the brain of a person with Alzheimer's Disease. Credit:   
   Wikipedia/public domain.    
   A new diet, appropriately known by the acronym MIND, could significantly lower   
   a person's risk of developing Alzheimer's disease, even if the diet is not   
   meticulously followed, according to a paper published online for subscribers   
   in March in the journal    
   Alzheimer's & Dementia: The Journal of the Alzheimer's Association.    
   Rush nutritional epidemiologist Martha Clare Morris, PhD, and colleagues   
   developed the "Mediterranean-DASH Intervention for Neurodegenerative Delay"   
   (MIND) diet. The study shows that the MIND diet lowered the risk of AD by as   
   much as 53 percent in    
   participants who adhered to the diet rigorously, and by about 35 percent in   
   those who followed it moderately well.    
   "One of the more exciting things about this is that people who adhered even   
   moderately to the MIND diet had a reduction in their risk for AD," said   
   Morris, a Rush professor, assistant provost for Community Research, and   
   director of Nutrition and    
   Nutritional Epidemiology. "I think that will motivate people."    
      
   Morris and her colleagues developed the MIND diet based on information that   
   has accrued from years' worth of past research about what foods and nutrients   
   have good, and bad, effects on the functioning of the brain over time. This is   
   the first study to    
   relate the MIND diet to Alzheimer's disease.    
      
   "I was so very pleased to see the outcome we got from the new diet," she said.    
      
   The MIND diet is a hybrid of the Mediterranean and DASH (Dietary Approaches to   
   Stop Hypertension) diets, both of which have been found to reduce the risk of   
   cardiovascular conditions, like hypertension, heart attack and stroke. Some   
   researchers have    
   found that the two older diets provide protection against dementia as well.    
      
   In the latest study, the MIND diet was compared with the two other diets.   
   People with high adherence to the DASH and Mediterranean diets also had   
   reductions in AD--39 percent with the DASH diet and 54 percent with the   
   Mediterranean diet--but got    
   negligible benefits from moderate adherence to either of the two other diets.    
      
   The MIND diet is also easier to follow than, say, the Mediterranean diet,   
   which calls for daily consumption of fish and 3-4 daily servings of each of   
   fruits and vegetables, Morris said.    
      
   The MIND diet has 15 dietary components, including 10 "brain-healthy food   
   groups"--green leafy vegetables, other vegetables, nuts, berries, beans, whole   
   grains, fish, poultry, olive oil and wine--and five unhealthy groups that   
   comprise red meats, butter    
   and stick margarine, cheese, pastries and sweets, and fried or fast food.    
      
   With the MIND diet, a person who eats at least three servings of whole grains,   
   a salad and one other vegetable every day--along with a glass of wine--snacks   
   most days on nuts, has beans every other day or so, eats poultry and berries   
   at least twice a    
   week and fish at least once a week and benefit. However, he or she must limits   
   intake of the designated unhealthy foods, especially butter (less than 1   
   tablespoon a day), cheese, and fried or fast food (less than a serving a week   
   for any of the three),    
   to have a real shot at avoiding the devastating effects of AD, according to   
   the study.    
      
   Berries are the only fruit specifically to make the MIND diet. "Blueberries   
   are one of the more potent foods in terms of protecting the brain," Morris   
   said, and strawberries have also performed well in past studies of the effect   
   of food on cognitive    
   function.    
      
   The MIND diet was not an intervention in this study, however; researchers   
   looked at what people were already eating. Participants earned points if they   
   ate brain-healthy foods frequently and avoided unhealthy foods. The one   
   exception was that    
   participants got one point if they said olive oil was the primary oil used in   
   their homes.    
      
   The study enlisted volunteers already participating in the ongoing Rush Memory   
   and Aging Project (MAP), which began in 1997 among residents of Chicago-area   
   retirement communities and senior public housing complexes. An optional "food   
   frequency    
   questionnaire" was added from 2004 to February 2013, and the MIND diet study   
   looked at results for 923 volunteers. A total of 144 cases of AD developed in   
   this cohort.    
      
   AD, which takes a devastating toll on cognitive function, is not unlike heart   
   disease in that there appear to be "many factors that play into who gets the   
   disease," including behavioral, environmental and genetic components, Dr.   
   Morris said.    
      
   "With late-onset AD, with that older group of people, genetic risk factors are   
   a small piece of the picture," she said. Past studies have yielded evidence   
   that suggests that what we eat may play a significant role in determining who   
   gets AD and who doesn'   
   t, Morris said.    
      
   When the researchers in the new study left out of the analyses those   
   participants who changed their diets somewhere along the line--say, on a   
   doctor's orders after a stroke--they found that "the association became   
   stronger between the MIND diet and [   
   favorable] outcomes" in terms of AD, Morris said. "That probably means that   
   people who eat this diet consistently over the years get the best protection."    
      
   In other words, it looks like the longer a person eats the MIND diet, the less   
   risk that person will have of developing AD, Morris said. As is the case with   
   many health-related habits, including physical exercise, she said, "You'll be   
   healthier if you've    
   been doing the right thing for a long time."    
      
   Morris said, "We devised a diet and it worked in this Chicago study. The   
   results need to be confirmed by other investigators in different populations   
   and also through randomized trials." That is the best way to establish a   
   cause-and-effect relationship    
   between the MIND diet and reductions in the incidence of Alzheimer's disease,   
   she said.    
      
        
   Provided by Rush University Medical Center    
      
   Explore further    
      
      
   Mediterranean diet may lower stroke risk, study finds    
      
   February 12th, 2015    
      
      
      
   http://m.medicalxpress.com/news/2015-03-mind-diet-significantly-   
   lzheimer-disease.html   
      
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