The MIND diet is a way of eating that scientists believe could help your brain stay healthy as you age.
This diet has a funny name, but it’s short for Mediterranean-DASH Intervention for Neurodegenerative Delay.
It was put together by researchers who studied the best parts of two other healthy diets, the Mediterranean and DASH (Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension) diets. These diets are known to help keep your heart healthy.
Scientists have looked at the MIND diet and found that it could slow down memory loss and even lower the chance of getting Alzheimer’s disease.
That’s a type of dementia that affects memory and other important mental functions. This is why the MIND diet has been ranked as one of the top five diets by U.S. News & World Report for six years in a row.
Studying The MIND Diet
The latest research on the MIND diet involved a group of 604 people. These people were a bit heavier than they should be and didn’t eat as healthily as they could. They also had family members who had Alzheimer’s disease.
During the study, which lasted for three years, the participants were put into two groups. Both groups were asked to eat fewer calories each day to lose weight.
One group followed the MIND diet closely, while the other group just ate their regular food.
Jennifer Ventrelle, a teacher and dietitian who worked on the study, said that both groups got lots of support from dietitians.
The dietitians made personal meal plans for them and checked in with them regularly. Over the course of the study, the participants came in five times for health check-ups.
By the end of the study, everyone had lost about 5.5% of their body weight. This was more than the study’s goal of 3% weight loss.
That’s a good thing because losing 3% of your body weight can help prevent or improve health problems.
Findings and Future Research
When the researchers looked at the results, they found that there wasn’t much difference between the two groups.
Both groups’ mental abilities got a little better over the three years. However, the group following the MIND diet had a slight edge.
The researchers think that the weight loss might have helped everyone’s brain health. But they also think the diet helped, too.
They found that even the group that ate their regular food improved their diet, and that could be part of why they did better on the tests.
The MIND diet includes foods like chicken, fish, berries, nuts, and leafy green vegetables. But it also tells you to avoid unhealthy foods like red meat, butter, full-fat cheese, sweets, and fried food.
One interesting thing is that even though the two diet groups ended up being pretty similar at the end of the trial, the MIND diet group started out with a healthier diet.
This suggests that maybe certain foods or nutrients might be more important than others for brain health. The researchers plan to keep studying this to find out more.
So, the MIND diet might not be a magic bullet against aging or dementia.
But the results suggest that it, along with other healthy habits like eating fewer calories and losing weight, could be a useful tool in keeping our brains healthy as we get older. But we need more research to confirm this.
If you care about brain health, please read studies about inflammation that may actually slow down cognitive decline in older people, and low vitamin D may speed up cognitive decline.
For more information about brain health, please see recent studies about common exercises that could protect against cognitive decline, and results showing that this MIND diet may protect your cognitive function, prevent dementia.
The study was published in the New England Journal of Medicine.
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