Posted on 06/12/2023 1:14:25 PM PDT by Red Badger
Switching to a diet full of fresh veggies and low in processed foods could do wonders for your brain's biological age, new research shows.
According to the international team of researchers who ran the study, eating a Mediterranean diet rich in vegetables, seafood, and whole grains appears to slow the signs of accelerated brain aging typically seen in obesity with as little as 1 percent loss in body weight.
Brain scans taken after 18 months showed the participants' brain age appearing almost 9 months younger than expected, compared to estimates of their brain's chronological age.
Like the participants in the clinical trial, you might not feel as old as the years you've lived, or perhaps your body feels like it's aging faster than you are – this is the difference between biological and chronological age.
Either way, research shows your body's biological age is much more than a feeling: Signs of biological aging can be found dotted along your DNA, etched onto the ends of your chromosomes, or as this study suggests, in the loosening connections of your brain.
While a growing body of research suggests that biological aging brought on by stressful events could be reversible, this new study shows that improving your diet may be one of the simplest options to improving body condition, irrespective of the years.
In the study, the researchers imaged the brains of 102 participants who were taking part in a larger clinical trial conducted at one workplace in Israel. Brain scans were taken once before the trial began and again after 18 months, along with a battery of tests of liver function, cholesterol levels, and body weight.
Groups ate one of three diets: a Mediterranean diet with lots of nuts, fish, and chicken instead of red meat; a Mediterranean diet with a few added extras such as green tea for the polyphenols; or a diet based on healthy dietary guidelines.
Estimates of brain age were based on an algorithm that had been trained on brain scans from a separate cohort of nearly 300 people, with the model accurately predicting age from measures of brain connectivity.
On average, people in the trial lost around 2.3 kilograms. For every 1 percent of body weight lost, the participants' brains appeared almost 9 months younger than their chronological age, the researchers found.
Whether changes in brain connectivity actually translate to improvements in brain function is still a big unknown. The brain is a complex web of flexible connections we're only just beginning to map out, though a recent review hints at the Mediterranean diet having a positive effect on memory in older people.
Signs of slowed brain aging were also associated with lower levels of liver fat and improved lipid profile but again, these changes could be superficial or short-lived.
"Our study highlights the importance of a healthy lifestyle, including lower consumption of processed food, sweets, and beverages, in maintaining brain health," says lead author and neuroscientist Gidon Levakov of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Israel.
That might be sound advice and although these findings are from a clinical trial where participants were randomly 'prescribed' a diet to follow, there are a few other limitations worth digesting.
Most of the participants were men, and they filled out online surveys about their diet and lifestyle habits, meaning the data may be skewed by what they could recall or chose to report.
And it's not all about food: participants' activity levels at work were taken into account; they also received a free gym membership as part of the trial, so exercise was a factor too.
What's more, past research has uncovered how the good fats of a Mediterranean diet work on a cellular level. But it has also exposed clear discrepancies in who reaps the health benefits of a diet rich in Mediterranean staples.
People with well-paying jobs and higher education who could afford to buy lots of fish and whole grains saw greater improvements in cardiovascular health than those on low incomes – even if their adherence to the diet was the same.
The study has been published in eLife.
Wish I didn’t know now what I didn’t know then.
People with well-paying jobs are typically college educated and do exercise and outdoorsy stuff, whereas low-paying jobs people are couch potatoes..................................
“Women and Minorities Suffer Most” is my interpretation.
Yawn. Another passing fad diet. People keep falling for this shyt.
Took a study to say, “quit eating transfats and carb laden fast food” like they haven’t know pretty much forever.
It’s not rocket science, yet people seem to make it more complicated than it needs to be.
At its core, it’s not just what you eat, but what you don’t. Plus, I believe that over 3/4 of Americans have specific deficiencies which magnify minor health issues into a synergy of more serious problems.
And it’s ‘manner of living’, not ‘diet’.
I know how hard it is to avoid modern processed foods (which include seed oils).
It borders on ‘religion’ as to dedication. People need to get off the ‘diet’ bandwagon and just demand a return to CLEAN FOODS.
Unfortunately, our food supply is thoroughly corrupted; a guy would have to shop local organic farms or grow his own food/cattle to meet all the criteria.
But I’ll be damned if I’m going to be tricked into mRNA crap as they’re trying to do for livestock (let alone other foods).
When did people “unlearn” how to say VEGETABLES? I can’t stand that infantile-sounding word, “veggies.”
Veggies. You get them from the fridge.
My wife was an RN for decades. She was the lead RN in a multi doctor primary care group for 2+ decades.
They inherited a lot of Italian patients when their primary care doc retired.
Most of these new patients were in good shape mentally and physically for 70-80 year old people.
They loved life, family, friends and lived on the Med Diet.
Basically none of those patients were overweight nor multi diseased with serious elder problems.
She went to using the Med diet plan after my failure on the high carb diet. I gained a lot of weight and was hungry 24/7.
In a year without dieting, her Med/mind food plan enabled me to lose about 12 pounds without diet and only snacking fruit, nuts, and other good veggies.
She weighs the same as she did on our wedding day, 63 years ago this fall.
Recently, many articles have called her basic food plan the Mind/Med food plan/diet.
We got the we Covid variant after Thanksgiving, and it lasted for 4-5 weeks. Several of our younger neighbors and friends got apparently the same variant.
All of us had memory loss and often were unable to do things we have been doing or most of our lives.
That seems to be going away for most of us on the Med/Mind food plan. It isn’t a harsh diet. In fact it isn’t a diet.
HAHAHAHAHA!!!
I have arthritis and IBS. When I was in Israel for 2 weeks...I had no pain or issues. Remarkable, really, how bad our food is here.
Spouse is from a Greek island...bean (no pun intended) feeding me healthy food for over half a century...don’t have any medical or memory issues at 81.
Buy only whole foods, and prepare the food yourself.
Canned is whole too.
Eat FRESH fruits and veges.
Ps..I work out at the gym 2 or 3 times a week..all weights in 80 to 100lb range including hand grip.
Bicep curls with 80+ pounds?
Just thinking about a Greek island takes ten years off of my brain...
The Mediterranean diet is not a “fad” diet. It has been around for literally thousands of years. It is the way people in Italy, southern France, and Greece eat. It means eating fresh food and vegetables and a lot of seafood. NO PROCESSED FOOD.
More olive oil, instead of butter. Less sugar. Fresh pasta. Fresh cheese.
It is similar to the way people in Japan eat huge amounts of fish/seafood and have a much lower rate of heart disease than we in the USA do.
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