Mediterranean Diet Helps Prevent Alzheimer’s

Med diet helps slow cognitive decline.

If you were hoping to replace a good diet with a blend of multivitamin supplements for cognitive health, you might be missing the big picture. The reality is that diet helps prevent Alzheimer’s disease, but not so much for multivitamin supplements.

Harvard researchers review the research

A 2012 paper out of Harvard Medical School states that supplements outside of vitamin E have failed to prove any benefit or prevention for Alzheimer’s disease – but diet and exercise do.

The paper comes from the 2012 December’s issue of Harvard Men’s Health Watch, which focused upon the findings of Dr. Gad Marshall, a Harvard Alzheimer’s researcher and Assistant Professor of Medicine at Harvard. Dr. Marshall contends that the major supplements people ask about – including B vitamins, Vitamin C, Co-enzyme Q10, Huperzine A, Ginko biloba, Fish oil, Curcumin and Coconut oil have yet to be proven to slow cognitive decline or prevent Alzheimer’s disease.

“There are a lot of things out there for which we have no data on whether they are safe or do anything to help,” said Dr. Marshall. “My patients and their families ask a lot about supplements, and I try to point them to whatever evidence we have.”

According to Dr. Marshall, only vitamin E has shown any promise to preserving improving memory among supplements. “There have been several studies showing that at these high doses there was a small increase in the death rate,” he said. But he added that large dose vitamin E supplementation also can come with safety issues. “Vitamin E at doses higher than 400 international units (IU) per day is risky for people with active cardiovascular disease or risk factors for it.”

What are proven to delay cognitive decline and Alzheimer’s, according to Dr. Marshall, include dietary and lifestyle changes – specifically the Mediterranean diet and exercise.

“My strongest recommendations are a Mediterranean-style diet and regular physical exercise,” he says. “There’s good evidence from multiple studies showing that these lifestyle modifications can prevent cognitive decline and dementia and also slow down existing cognitive decline.”

These two factors have been proven to reduce memory and cognitive decline without question. The evidence comes from numerous studies and reviews from eminent researchers around the world.

Studies link diet and cognition

For example, a study from Australia’s Edith Cowan University of nearly 1,000 people – including some with mild cognitive decline and Alzheimer’s – found that those who had diets closest to a Mediterranean Diet had the least incidence of cognitive decline and Alzheimer’s disease. Many other studies have confirmed these results over the past few years.

So what about the supplements mentioned above? Why are have these been given so much attention if they aren’t proven to prevent or delay Alzheimer’s?

Because those nutrients have been proven, in one way or another, to benefit nerve function and brain cell function. The leap, however, has been to prove that when taken as supplements, these isolated nutrients will reduce cognitive decline or prevent Alzheimer’s disease.

As to whether the research has been focused enough to establish that these supplements will definitely not help reduce cognitive decline is largely unanswered, primarily because of a lack of funding and incentive – noting that naturally occurring nutrients cannot be patented. Ginkgo and vitamin E are among the few given much funding focus.

Why does the Med diet help?

The question also arises is what are the factors of the Mediterranean diet and why does this diet help reduce cognitive decline? As stated recently by researchers from the University of Malta – the Med Diet “is rich in the antioxidants Vitamins C and E, polyunsaturated fatty acids and polyphenolic compounds.”

As we explore the relationship between many of the supplements tested and these nutrient-rich foods, we can easily see a trend. Those supplements tested, such as B vitamins, vitamin C, vitamin E, Co-Q10 and others have been isolated from nature and in sterile laboratory environments. Some, such as vitamin E, have been completely synthetic.

What do these elements have in common with the Mediterranean diet? Yes, the Med Diet certainly does contain many of these nutrients. But the Med Diet, as pointed out by the University of Malta scientists – contains numerous nutrients that synergize with each other. And because the Med Diet is rich in plant-based foods, the Diet contains polyphenols.

These polyphenols are plant components that include flavonoids, proanthrocyanidins, sterols and many other types of special compounds. These compounds work synergistically within plant-based foods to provide a host of benefits, which include brain cell health, artery health, heart health, liver and kidney health and many others. The combination of these plant-based foods provide the ultimate in cognitive decline prevention, because along with other benefits they reduce damage produced by free radicals – which are ultimately at the core of cognitive decline according to most research.

The bottom line is that nature works in synergy, just as the body does. The brain does not sit in a laboratory jar isolated from the rest of the body. The brain operates as part of the rest of the whole body. The health of the rest of that body – including the arteries, heart, liver, kidneys, bloodstream and so on – directly affects the health of our brain cells.

A primarily plant-based diet and regular exercise are the key elements in keeping the whole body healthy. This is proven not only in cognitive research, but in cancer research, heart disease research, liver and kidney research and elsewhere. Turns out, those plant-based foods the Western diet relegates to a small portion at the edge of the plate are the very medicines our body needs to keep itself healthy.

REFERENCES:

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