Mediterranean Diet Cuts Risk of Brain Damage Linked to Cognitive Problems

Following the Mediterranean diet may help food consumers reduce their risk of brain damage in some small areas of the brain, which can lead to the cognitive problems like memory loss and thinking inability, a new study suggests.
 
The study found that people who followed a Mediterranean- like diet were less likely to suffer brain infarcts, which are small areas of dead tissue caused by blockages of the tissue's blood supply.
 
The Mediterranean diet includes high amounts of vegetables, legumes, fruit, cereals, fish and monounsaturated fatty acids such as those from olive oil.  Conversely, the diet calls for low amounts of saturated fat, dairy products, meat and poultry and mild to moderate amounts of alcohol.
 
Nikolaos Scarmeas, MD, MSc, of Columbia University Medical Center in New York divided 712 people in New York into three groups based on the degree of similarity of their diets to the Mediterranean diet, then conducted MRI brain scans of the subjects an average of six years later.  238 people were found to have at least one area of brain damage.
 
The researchers found those who most closely followed a Mediterranean-like diet were 36 percent less likely to have infarcts than those who followed the diet the least.  Those who moderately followed the Mediterranean diet were 21 percent less likely to have brain damage than the people who least followed the diet.
 
The study was released today, but slated to be presented at the American Academy of Neurology's 62nd annual meeting in Toronto April 10 to April 17, 2010, according to a press release by the medical organization.
 
The researchers previously found people followed Mediterranean diet were at a lower risk of Alzheimer's disease and may have a longer survival rate.  The results of the study explain in part why.
 
In their previous study reported in the Dec 2006 issue of Archives of Neurology, Dr. Scarmeas and colleagues compared 194 patients aged 76.3 years with Alzheimer's disease and 1790 controls who did not have the disease for their adherence to Mediterranean diet on a 0-to-9 scale.
 
Those who got 7 to 9 on the scale were 68 percent less likely to develop Alzheimer's disease compared to those who got 1 to 3, the researchers found.  For each additional unit on the diet scale, the risk of Alzheimer's disease decreased by 19 to 24 percent.
 
The Mediterranean diet has been associated with a reduced risk of many diseases and health conditions, including cancer, obesity, high cholesterol, high blood pressure, and problems with processing glucose – a condition which may lead to diabetes.

By david Liu and editing  by Rachel Stockton