United States: According to a new study, analyzing the MIND diet for ten years has shown a small but significant decrease in risk factors regarding the development of thinking, concentration, and memory problems.
More about the MIND diet
As per the expert reports, the Mediterranean-DASH Intervention for Neurodegenerative Delay diet involves a combination of elements ranging from the traditional Mediterranean diet to the Dietary Approaches in order to prevent conditions such as Hypertension, or DASH diet, which relies on reduction in blood pressure, CNN Health reported.
Dr. Russell Sawyer, the author of the study, an assistant professor of clinical neurology added that the MIND diet would be established to tackle cognitive decline, more so dementia expressly.
According to CNN, other foods consumed under MIND diet include; green vegetative leaves, other non-vegetative leaves, nuts, berries and black beans, whole grains, seafoods, poultry products, olive oil and allowable wine.
Five unhealthy food groups include red meats, butter and stick margarine, cheese, fried and fast foods, and pastries and sweets and the latter is included in the MIND diet in small proportions thus reducing the amount of trans and saturated fats consumed.
What more are the experts stating?
According to Dr. David Katz, a specialist in preventive and lifestyle medicine who founded the nonprofit True Health Initiative, a global coalition of experts dedicated to evidence-based lifestyle medicine, “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),” CNN Health reported.
“That such effects would translate into protection of the brain is anything but a surprise,” Katz said in an email. “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,” he added.
Women and Black people to be benefitted largely
The recently held study, which was published in Neurology, the journal of the American Academy of Neurology, with the support of the National Institutes of Health, REGARDS was created to conduct an examination to find the reason behind Southern American and Black American people’s greater susceptibility for incidence of stroke.
The analysis was conducted by following almost 30 thousand adults of age 45 and older since 2003.
They found that of more than 14,000 people participating in the study, 70 percent were white, and 30 percent were black.
At the beginning and again after ten years of the study, participants were asked about their dietary intake and underwent electrocardiograms, BP measures as well as blood work.
Sawyer said, “These were surprising findings,” and, “The benefits of the MIND diet may have a differential impact in women and Blacks, and this is an area for future research.”