REDUCE YOUR ALZHEIMER’S RISK WITH THE MIND DIET
The holiday season would seem like a lousy time to talk about diets. Yet, you can start following the MIND Diet and still enjoy those fantastic Christmas-time feasts.
You’ve probably heard of the DASH diet (the Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension) for reducing blood pressure and the Mediterranean diet for heart health. Well, the MIND diet is a hybrid of these two. (MIND is the acronym for Mediterranean-DASH Intervention for Neurodegenerative Delay.) Its goal is to reduce Alzheimer’s disease, other types of dementia, and the decline in brain health that normally occurs as we age.
To explain the MIND diet in more detail, here are excerpts from the April 2019 Mayo Clinic article by Angela L. Murad, 15 simple diet tweaks that could cut your Alzheimer’s risk.
MIND Diet Basics
The MIND diet goes big on natural plant-based foods while limiting red meat, saturated fat and sweets. And observational studies suggest the diet can reduce the risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease by up to 53 percent as well as slow cognitive decline and improve verbal memory.
Researchers developed the diet by looking at the Mediterranean and DASH diets, then focusing on the foods with the most compelling findings in dementia prevention. Vegetables, especially leafy greens, rose to the top. In general, fruit didn’t, though berries made the list.
Then researchers tracked detailed eating logs in an older adult population for an average of 4.5 years to uncover trends among the diets of those who developed dementia versus those who didn’t. Their discovery: Older adults whose diets most closely resembled the pattern laid out in the MIND diet had brains as sharp as people 7.5 years younger. That’s a substantial difference, since delaying dementia by just five years has been suggested to cut the prevalence and cost of the disease in half.
MIND Diet Guidelines
Want to see how your diet stacks up? Give yourself a point for each of the following MIND diet rules you typically follow in your life (up to a max of 15 points).
At least three servings of whole grains a day- Green leafy vegetables (such as salad) at least six times a week
- Other vegetables at least once a day
- Berries at least twice a week
- Red meat less than four times a week
- Fish at least once a week
- Poultry at least twice a week
- Beans or legumes more than three times a week
- Nuts at least five times a week
- Fried or fast food less than once a week
- Mainly olive oil for cooking
- Less than a tablespoon of butter or margarine a day
- Less than a serving of cheese a week
- Less than five pastries or sweets a week
- One glass of wine or other alcoholic drink a day
While both the MIND and Mediterranean diets yield similar reductions in Alzheimer’s risk, the MIND diet is more flexible, which may make it easier to follow for some Americans. For example, the Mediterranean diet recommends eating fish multiple days a week, which can be a challenge.
Another interesting takeaway: You don’t have to have a perfect diet to benefit. While the adults in the study who followed the diet most closely (an average score of 9.6 points out of 15) saw the biggest drop in their Alzheimer’s risk, the ones who scored in the middle (7.5 points) still cut their risk by over a third. Consider targeting just one or two of the habits above to improve your score — and your brain health.
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You can serve this delicious holiday feast using the above MIND diet foods:
- Roast turkey (poultry)
- Green leafy vegetables (such as a salad)
- Sweet potatoes (other vegetable)
- Green beans almondine (beans and nuts)
- Cranberries (berries)
- Whole grain biscuits (whole grains)
- Pumpkin or pecan pie (pastry/sweet)
- Glass of wine (one glass of wine or other alcoholic drink)
Merry Christmas!