Study Recruiting to Determine if Diet Can Prevent Alzheimer’s Disease

It’s long been thought that diet may play a role in preventing Alzheimer’s disease and dementia, but now a new study group is aiming to determine if there is a direct link between what we eat and the onset of neurodegenerative diseases.

Mediterranean diet seen to protect aging brains but for reasons that baffle. Find out more.

A research team from Harvard and Rush universities will be recruiting around 600 people between the ages of 65 and 84 years old from Boston and Chicago. The subjects will be overweight, generally favoring a poor diet, and have a family history of dementia. Half of the participants will be asked to follow the MIND diet–a combination of the Mediterranean diet and the DASH (dietary approaches to stop hypertension) diet. The MIND diet consists of foods which are considered to be good for brain health, including poultry, fish, leafy greens, berries and nuts.

The other half will follow a more unhealthy diet consisting of red meat, butter and margarine, pastries, fried foods etc.

The subjects will be followed for three years to see if the diet can help prevent any neurodegenerative diseases. Comparisons will be made between the two study groups and conclusions will be drawn as to whether diet really does have any effect on preventing Alzheimer’s disease. Find out more about this study here.

Alzheimer’s disease risk is higher with a western diet, study finds.

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