New Study Again Finds Mediterranean Diet Lowers Symptoms of Brain Aging (cnn.com) 56
CNN reports that a new study has again found that Mediterranean diets can lower your risk of dementia "by interfering with the buildup of two proteins, amyloid and tau, into the plaques and tangles that are hallmarks of Alzheimer's disease."
"The mountain of evidence continues to build that you are what you eat when it comes to brain health," said Dr. Richard Isaacson, who directs the Alzheimer's Prevention Clinic at Weill Cornell Medicine and New York-Presbyterian Hospital... "For every point of higher compliance with the diet, people had one extra year less of brain aging. That is striking," Isaacson added. "Most people are unaware that it's possible to take control of your brain health, yet this study shows us just that...."
What is the Mediterranean diet...? The true diet is simple, plant-based cooking, with the majority of each meal focused on fruits and vegetables, whole grains, beans and seeds, with a few nuts and a heavy emphasis on extra-virgin olive oil. Fats other than olive oil, such as butter, are consumed rarely, if at all. And say goodbye to refined sugar or flour. Meat can make a rare appearance, but usually only to flavor a dish. Instead, meals may include eggs, dairy and poultry, but in much smaller portions than in the traditional Western diet. However, fish, which are full of brain-boosting omega-3's, are a staple.
The study, published Wednesday in Neurology, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology, examined 343 people at high risk of developing Alzheimer's and compared them to 169 cognitively normal subjects... After adjusting for factors like age, sex and education, the study found that people who did not follow the diet closely had more signs of amyloid and tau buildup in their spinal fluid than those who did adhere to the diet... "These results add to the body of evidence that show what you eat may influence your memory skills later on," said study author Tommaso Ballarini, a postdoctoral fellow at the German Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases in Bonn, Germany, in a statement...
This isn't the first research to find a link between brain health and the Mediterranean diet or one of its plant-based cousins. A study of nearly 6,000 healthy older Americans with an average age of 68 found those who followed the Mediterranean or the similar MIND diet lowered their risk of dementia by a third.
After reviewing the new study, Isaacson told CNN that "The strongest factor to really move the needle was regular fish consumption."
What is the Mediterranean diet...? The true diet is simple, plant-based cooking, with the majority of each meal focused on fruits and vegetables, whole grains, beans and seeds, with a few nuts and a heavy emphasis on extra-virgin olive oil. Fats other than olive oil, such as butter, are consumed rarely, if at all. And say goodbye to refined sugar or flour. Meat can make a rare appearance, but usually only to flavor a dish. Instead, meals may include eggs, dairy and poultry, but in much smaller portions than in the traditional Western diet. However, fish, which are full of brain-boosting omega-3's, are a staple.
The study, published Wednesday in Neurology, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology, examined 343 people at high risk of developing Alzheimer's and compared them to 169 cognitively normal subjects... After adjusting for factors like age, sex and education, the study found that people who did not follow the diet closely had more signs of amyloid and tau buildup in their spinal fluid than those who did adhere to the diet... "These results add to the body of evidence that show what you eat may influence your memory skills later on," said study author Tommaso Ballarini, a postdoctoral fellow at the German Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases in Bonn, Germany, in a statement...
This isn't the first research to find a link between brain health and the Mediterranean diet or one of its plant-based cousins. A study of nearly 6,000 healthy older Americans with an average age of 68 found those who followed the Mediterranean or the similar MIND diet lowered their risk of dementia by a third.
After reviewing the new study, Isaacson told CNN that "The strongest factor to really move the needle was regular fish consumption."
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
My guess would be lead paint as a child. As a young adult too much Keystone beer and Skoal. Secondhand smoke and exhaust fumes from jacked up rusted out pickup trucks certainly didn't help. Yeah you're really "owning the libs".
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Sorry 'bout that, but the smoke-exhausting industries all moved to moderately small towns in the West and South, so they wouldn't pay union (decent earning) wages.
But you've never heard of the "Rust Belt".
What happens to brain damaged city folk? (Score:2)
Brain damaged city folk are a minority but we still are probably home to more than all the rural population combined! They might begin OK but they get brain damaged as they get older. These people are also known as Republicans.
A sane, legit republican is now called a RINO. A Liz Cheney should hardly qualify (as Nixon thought her dad was crazy fanatic) but now she's a RINO too. It's all shifting towards despotism; the final resting place of all democracies. Too bad the life of this one was so short.
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Controls (Score:3, Informative)
I haven't read the paper, but from a glance this doesn't say much. What specifically about that diet contributes to that? How did they rule out that some other controlled diet doesn't do the same thing?
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I'm just doctors don't give a rat's ass about cause, and they only care about clinical results.
Similar to physics, where the words explaining something don't matter very much, but the prediction is mathematical, as are the results. It doesn't matter if an electric field induces movement in an electron, or the motion of an electron induces an electric field; you can explain the cause in either direction, and nobody cares. (except for neckbeards who don't know that current is defined in terms of voltage)
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I'm just doctors don't give a rat's ass about cause, and they only care about clinical results.
It would definitely be a benefit to know of the cause. Getting patients to stick to a strict diet is a very hard thing to do. If you could narrow it down to one particular thing or even several things, that increases the odds that a diet plan could be less strict and thus easier to follow.
Similar to physics, where the words explaining something don't matter very much, but the prediction is mathematical, as are the results.
Unlike physics, biology is very much a soft science. That means you can't narrow it down to mathematics and things are difficult to predict. Just to give you an idea, other soft sciences include psychiatry and economics. S
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No biology is just very complex physics and chemistry due to DNA. Not all DNA reacts to the same things in the same way, what is allergic to one, heals the other and every shade of variance in-between.
In the case of eating fish, is it healthy to eat the fish or eat what the fish has been eating. Unless the fish shows special genetic characteristics for molecularly fabricating the healthy complex molecules or where they drawn from the environment as it consumed what ever it consumed.
Eat the fish or eat the
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No biology is just very complex physics and chemistry due to DNA.
That's way oversimplifying it. It's even easier to argue that chemistry is really just physics. And no, there's a lot more to biology than DNA.
Not all DNA reacts to the same things in the same way, what is allergic to one, heals the other and every shade of variance in-between.
Allergies, at least the way that humans experience them, have very little to do with DNA. Genetically identical twins can be allergic to very different things, or one twin could be allergic to many things while the other twin has no allergies at all.
Re: Controls (Score:4, Interesting)
What specifically about that diet contributes to that?
Last time, it was determined that the benefits weren't due to olive oil or the ethyl alcohol in their wine but rather the resveratrol in all the grapes and tomatoes.
Likely nothing has changed.
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Tomatoes aren't very Mediterranean. That aside, the article seems to stipulate that the closer you follow the diet plan, the better the result, so it couldn't be narrowed to just that.
Re: Controls (Score:1)
Tomatoes aren't very Mediterranean.
Vaffanculo.
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Tomatoes aren't very Mediterranean.
They are. Perhaps you should once visit a Spanish, Greek, Italian, etc. Restaurant? Christoph Colombus brought same, in case you want to nitpick that they are from south america and not "native" to the Mediterranean. It is even hard to find an north African dish without tomatoes.
Here, some idiots claim I would never give a link :P
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Summary:
4 - Turkey
9 - Italy
9 - Spain (yes they gave rank 9 two times)
16 - Portugal (strictly speaking - as in
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I guess you also didn't read all the way to the end of the summary.
After reviewing the new study, Isaacson told CNN that "The strongest factor to really move the needle was regular fish consumption."
Any other questions that are answered in the summary?
Re: Controls (Score:3)
I did read that, and it still doesn't answer the question.
Come to a news site, not to read, but comment (Score:2)
I haven't read the paper, but from a glance this doesn't say much. What specifically about that diet contributes to that? How did they rule out that some other controlled diet doesn't do the same thing?
Seems you dont understand how this site works. You READ the article, and then bitch. Or maybe you are the new, "modern" kind of user around here.
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So lacking causal claims at an early stage of study, you're skeptical of correlation?
Wow. Welcome to slashdot, please check your brain in at the door.
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Research about the claims of the Mediterranean diet has been ongoing for decades, this is by no means early stage.
Brain atrophy. (Score:3)
"The mountain of evidence continues to build that you are what you [read] when it comes to brain health,"
FTFY.
Re: Brain atrophy. (Score:2)
How do you have fish be a staple (Score:3)
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Mercury build-up is highly dependent on the type of fish. Perhaps you might research that.
Re: How do you have fish be a staple (Score:1)
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Cheap. Safe. Carnivorous. Pick two.
Want safe and cheap? Eat lower on the food chain. Clams and sardines for example. Want to safely eat carnivorous fish? No problem, just buy brands that specifically promise to test every fish for mercury. The brand "Safe Catch" would be an example of that. Yes, this is very expensive.
This pdf be a helpful resource: https://www.nrdc.org/sites/def... [nrdc.org]
I can co ndense this down to its essence & cau (Score:2)
I have yet to find any research not fitting the complex carbohydrate hypothesis:
That it's the effect of our food on the micro-organisms in our gut that leads to most problems.
Because it's not the same if you eat pure sugar or complex, long, branching carbs inside whole cells, that need various processes to be broken down. Ditto for processing in general.
And no, do not generalize it to "all processing, including cooking meat, is bad". But clearly, a bunch of rehydrated white powders and pink sludges are not
What about ancestry? (Score:3)
Always amusing (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm just always amused that poultry and fish are not meat to some people.
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Actually it should be very difficult to distinguish between meet and fish.
If you have difficulties I could give you probably 20 categories from which about 10 fit to "meat" and the other 10 fit to "fish" and most of them won't overlap ...
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I believe the pope also has some guidelines on this. His don't make a lot of sense either.
No meat but poultry is ok? (Score:4, Interesting)
Since when is poultry not meat?
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Since when is poultry not meat?
Chicken McNuggets?
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Probably meant "red meat", specifically beef.
Poultry, pork and fish are generally considered white meat and generally healthier in pretty much every measure, including environmental impact.
Oddly, red meat fish like salmon and tuna are also considered white meat. Must be the omega-3 fatty acids and other stuff that makes them healthy.
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>Poultry, pork and fish are generally considered white meat and generally healthier in pretty much every measure, including environmental impact.
Except they are not healthier.
Red meat comes from ruminants. Ruminants take what goes in their mouth and bacteria reprocess it into short chain fatty acids, which is what the ruminant survives on. This means that regardless of what they are fed, the fat profile, while affected by the diet, is not completely compromised.
However pork and chicken are not ruminants.
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That does not describe a Mediterranean diet (Score:3)
What is the Mediterranean diet...? The true diet is simple, plant-based cooking, with the majority of each meal focused on fruits and vegetables, whole grains, beans and seeds, with a few nuts and a heavy emphasis on extra-virgin olive oil. Fats other than olive oil, such as butter, are consumed rarely, if at all. And say goodbye to refined sugar or flour. Meat can make a rare appearance, but usually only to flavor a dish. Instead, meals may include eggs, dairy and poultry, but in much smaller portions than in the traditional Western diet. However, fish, which are full of brain-boosting omega-3's, are a staple.
This might overlap with a Mediterranean diet, but most certainly does not describe one. Especially if you take the fact that it is a vast difference between e.g. Spain via Italy towards Greece.
Biggest mistakes: yes they eat butter. And yes, meat is nearly daily in the diet. The most important point probably is: the typical times for meals are completely different than for northern European countries. And also typical is consumption of wine with the meals, especially red. And bluntly: whole grain pasta or pizza simply does not exist. Well if you want to nitpick, you find it somewhere on a shelf probably.
Bluntly I would say: the quote is complete false.
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And bluntly: whole grain pasta or pizza simply does not exist.
Do you suggest pasta or pizza are part of Mediterranean diet?
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Yes they are ... or what do you think from their come?
Americans invented them from nowhere?
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When people refer to "Mediterranean diet", they do not mean the diet of anyone living in Mediterranean area.
Mediterranean diet is about a particular traditional diet, originating from Mediterranean area, and pizza and pasta are not included
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Mediterranean diet is about a particular traditional diet, originating from Mediterranean area, and pizza and pasta are not included :P
That is why I pointed out: the definition is wrong
Especially when it mentions whole grains which basically no one eats around the Mediterranean. That is more a German thing.
Don't eat fish! (Score:1)
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FFS (Score:4, Informative)
>The true diet is simple, plant-based cooking
This is a lie of the highest grade.
The data proporting to represent what a mediterranean diet was was collected by Ancel Keys during *Lent* in a couple of coastal villages. Go to the mediterranean and you see a lot of meat being eaten. Go to a Greek restaurant and it's hardly a vegetarian cuisine.
This is another stupid epidemiological study flying in the face of every randomized, controlled, interventional study ever performed on diet.
We understand the biochemical mechanisms of 'healthy whole grains' inducing leaking gut, inflammation and autoimmune disorders. We don't need a confounded epi studies done by vegans with biases to muddy the waters with this nonsense.
Italy is in the Med... (Score:2)
Ergo Italian food e.g. pizza is part of the Mediterranean diet.