Alzheimer\u2019s Prevention Clinic<\/a> at Weill Cornell Medicine and NewYork-Presbyterian.<\/p>\n\n\n\nIsaacson, who was not involved in the new study, said the way it measured healthy eating harkens back to how doctors used to think about what was healthy \u2014 as with the now-dated food pyramid. It \u201clumps together\u201d foods that are known to benefit brain health, such as leafy green vegetables, with foods such as beans, with an impact that\u2019s unknown, he added.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Study author Tasnime Akbaraly wrote in an email that the primary scale \u201cis based on a set of specific and limited food groups and might not cover all aspects of a \u2018healthy\u2019 diet \u2026 and may not be adapted to the dietary habits of all populations.\u201d However, the study showed consistent results over a long period of time, following people for a median of nearly 25 years. Most observational studies on diet and cognitive health, she added, cover much shorter windows.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But in the new study, it\u2019s not like what people ate didn\u2019t matter. The authors found that healthier diets were associated with lower mortality risks, in line with previous research.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cNot evidencing an association between midlife diet and dementia does not mean that diet does not matter on cognitive health,\u201d said Akbaraly, a researcher at Inserm, the French National Institute of Health and Medical Research, at the University of Montpellier in France.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The study also found a \u201cslight decrease in diet quality in the years preceding dementia diagnosis [which] suggests that unhealthy diet could be part of the cascade of changes occurring in the preclinical phase of dementia,\u201d said Akbaraly, also an honorary researcher at University College London.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Isaacson said the research is strong, in a sense, for how long it followed participants, but it\u2019s always important to look at who\u2019s being studied for commonalities in diet, exercise, stressors, education level and other factors that could skew the data one way or the other.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In this case, the new study included more than 8,200 London-based civil servants, over two-thirds male and predominantly white. Among them, there were 344 recorded cases of dementia. The study used electronic medical records to identify cases of dementia, which the authors said could overlook milder cases that haven\u2019t been diagnosed yet. But it also also allowed them to evaluate everyone they recruited for the study, rather than just those who showed up for follow-up visits.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIt is already well known that within this cohort there were marked differences in health according to their social position, with the higher grades of civil servants having better health and the lowest grades having the worst health,\u201d Tom Sanders, professor emeritus of nutrition and dietetics at King\u2019s College London, said in an emailed statement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWhat we don\u2019t know is anything about the nutritional quality of the diets and the linkage of dietary choice with other aspects of lifestyle such as smoking and alcohol intake,\u201d Sanders added, \u201cboth factors known to increase risk of dementia.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When it comes to dementia risk, experts say that what you eat is only part of a very complex equation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIt would be wrong to suggest that diet in middle-age is not important,\u201d Sanders said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Experts have estimated that a third of dementia cases may be preventable through lifestyle changes<\/a> including diet, exercise, quitting smoking and getting enough sleep.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\u201cYou can\u2019t just eat a magic blueberry or follow a certain diet and think that your likelihood of Alzheimer\u2019s is going to go away,\u201d Isaacson said. \u201cPeople take different roads to Alzheimer\u2019s disease and dementia.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
When it comes to diet and dementia, the research can seem like a mixed bag. Certain diets, like the Mediterranean diet, have sometimes been associated with better cognitive outcomes, but some studies have found no link between what people eat and their risk of dementia \u2014 like one published Tuesday in the medical journal JAMA. The new study showed \u201cno significant association\u201d between how well people ate during midlife and how likely they were to get dementia. But some experts pushed back […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-388","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-conditions"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/healthnews.zone\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/388","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/healthnews.zone\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/healthnews.zone\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/healthnews.zone\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/healthnews.zone\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=388"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/healthnews.zone\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/388\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":389,"href":"https:\/\/healthnews.zone\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/388\/revisions\/389"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/healthnews.zone\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=388"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/healthnews.zone\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=388"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/healthnews.zone\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=388"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}