Healthy Diet May Help Shield the Aging Brain

I thought this was a great article on a recent study about diet and brain function. I believe it reinforces the importance of eating healthy to maintain all functions of body and mind:

(HealthDay News) – Older adults who ate better maintained problem-solving and planning skills, study finds.

Eating a healthier diet might reduce the risk of problems with certain brain functions as you age, findings from a recent study suggest.

Older adults with healthier diets reduced their odds of impaired “executive function” by 35 percent. Executive function refers to a collection of things done by the brain, including memory, reasoning, multi-tasking, problem-solving and planning skills.

“Healthy diet might affect cognition [thinking skills] through several mechanisms,” said study co-author Carol Derby, associate professor of neurology and of epidemiology and population health at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York City.

“Healthy diet is associated with reduced rates of cardiovascular disease, with more healthy weight and with reduced risk of diabetes, all of which are risk factors for cognitive decline and dementia,” she explained.

However, this study wasn’t designed to show that eating more healthfully actually caused the better brain function, or that a good diet could prevent Alzheimer’s or dementia. The study was only designed to find an association between a healthy diet and better brain function.

Source: www.nlm.nih.gov