Mediterranean diet can reduce the risk of dementia, showed new study published in BMC Medicine medical journal.
More specifically, analysis of data from more than 60,000 participants revealed that the choice of Mediterranean diet reduces the likelihood of the occurrence of dementia by almost a quarter. According to the report, this is even the case for those who are most at risk due to genes.
What the study showed
“The main message from this study is that, even for people with higher genetic risk, the Mediterranean diet could reduce the likelihood of developing dementia”, according to This said the lead author of the study Oliver Shannon, a lecturer at the University of Newcastle.
Among those people whose choices for food resembled less the Mediterranean diet, “about 17 out of 1,000 people developed dementia during the study’s follow-up period of almost nine years,” she said.
Conversely, among people whose dietary choices were most like a Mediterranean diet, “only about 12 out of 1,000 people developed dementia”.
Full of healthy foods
A Mediterranean diet is filled with healthy plant foods such as vegetables, nuts and legumes. It is rich in whole grains, fruits and olive oil and fish.
Subjects in the study also consumed less red or processed meat, sweets and pastries, and drank less sugar-sweetened drinks, Shannon said.
For the new study, the researchers focused on 60,298 participants from the UK biomedical database Biobank, who had completed a nutritional assessment and who were in their 60s. During a median follow-up of nine years, 882 people had dementia.
Previous research on the Mediterranean diet
Previous studies have looked at whether the Mediterranean diet can help prevent dementia. In fact, a study published in October that examined medical records of 28,025 Swedes found that diet did not protect against dementia.
In contrast, another study published in May, which included nearly 2,000 elderly people, found that diets rich in foods associated with inflammation – unlike the Mediterranean diet, which appears to be anti-inflammatory – were associated with faster brain aging observed in MRI.
