• Posted September 19, 2024

Do You Know the MIND Diet? It Might Keep You Sharp With Age

It's called the MIND diet and its primary aim is to help guard against thinking and memory declines as you age. But does it work?

Yes, claims new research that found following the MIND diet for 10 years produced a small but significant decrease in the risk of developing thinking, memory and concentration problems.

“With the number of people with dementia increasing with the aging population, it’s critical to find changes that we can make to delay or slow down the development of cognitive problems,” lead study author Dr. Russell Sawyer, an assistant professor of clinical neurology and rehabilitation medicine at the University of Cincinnati's Gardner Neuroscience Institute, said in a news release on the study. “We were especially interested to see whether diet affects the risk of cognitive impairment in both Black and white study participants.”

How does the diet work its magic?

The MIND (Mediterranean-DASH Intervention for Neurodegenerative Delay) diet joins elements of the Mediterranean diet and the DASH diet, which focuses on reducing blood pressure.

“Among the MIND diet components are 10 brain-healthy food groups — green leafy vegetables, other vegetables, nuts, berries, beans, whole grains, seafood, poultry, olive oil and wine,” Sawyer told CNN.

Meanwhile, five unhealthy food groups -- red meats, butter and stick margarine, cheese, fried and fast foods, and pastries and sweets -- are very limited in the MIND diet, Sawyer added.

“The MIND diet has all the key features -- notably an emphasis on real food, mostly plants -- required to reduce systemic inflammation, facilitate weight loss, improve the health of the microbiome, ameliorate insulin resistance, lower elevated blood lipids [fats], and slow atherogenesis [clogging of arteries],” Dr. David Katz, a specialist in preventive and lifestyle medicine who founded the lifestyle as medicine nonprofit True Health Initiative, told CNN.

“That such effects would translate into protection of the brain is anything but a surprise,” Katz added. “This study of association does not, by itself, prove that the MIND diet protects cognitive health, but given the clear mechanisms in play, it certainly suggests it does.”

The research, published Wednesday in the journal Neurology, is part of an ongoing study called REGARDS (Reasons for Geographic and Racial Differences in Stroke). Sponsored by the National Institutes of Health, REGARDS is looking at why Southern American and Black American people have a higher risk of stroke, and it has been following about 30,000 adults age 45 and older since 2003.

Of the more than 14,000 people in the study, 70% were white and 30% were Black. At the start of the study, and again a decade later, participants were asked about their dietary intake and underwent electrocardiograms, blood pressure measurements and blood work.

Researchers then scored the diets on higher adherence to MIND diet parameters.

What did the researchers discover?

People who followed the MIND diet more closely were 4% less likely to develop memory and thinking problems than those who did not adhere to it, the study found. The finding held even after factoring in exercise, education, smoking, body mass index, medical conditions, age and anxiety or depression.

For women, the risk fell even more -- they were 6% less likely to develop cognitive impairment.

“These findings warrant further study, especially to examine these varying impacts among men and women and Black and white people, but it’s exciting to consider that people could make some simple changes to their diet and potentially reduce or delay their risk of cognitive issues,” Sawyer said in a journal news release.

More information

Harvard University has more on the MIND diet.

SOURCE: Neurology, news release, Sept. 18, 2024; CNN