The Diet That Reduces Your Risk of Alzheimer’s

iStock With a just-in-time-for-the-holidays reboot, the MIND Diet, which isn’t "brand new," is giving a whole new meaning to “mindful eating.” Designed to make your body—and your brain—healthier, you can use the eating plan, which stands for Mediterranean-DASH Intervention for Neurodegenerative Delay, to ward off unhealthy holiday temptations and slash your risk of Alzheimer’s. Sounds like a win-win. The program is a tasty combo of the DASH diet and Mediterranean diet, both helpful in reducing heart disease risk. And yes, MIND consists of green leafy vegetables, other vegetables, nuts, berries, beans, whole grains, fish, poultry, olive oil, and—are you sitting down?—wine! There’s a lot to like about this eating plan that’s made the U.S. News & World Report list of "Best Diets" a few times, and has been ranked the easiest diet to follow, which gives it lots of curb appeal. The Mind Diet Payoff In the original study published in 2015 in Alzheimer’s & Dementia: The Journal of the Alzheimer’s Association , the MIND diet reduced Alzheimer’s disease risk by as much as 53% if participants stuck to the diet rigorously and by about 35% if they only followed it moderately well. Bottom line: The longer you eat this, the lower your risk for Alzheimer’s disease. The authors devised the MIND diet score "that specifically captures dietary components shown to be neuroprotective and related it to change in cognition over an average 4.7 years among 960 participants of the Memory and Aging Project." They used a questionnaire and tests to assess cognition. And about those foods they recommend below: "The Mediterranean and DASH diets have demonstrated effects on the reduction of cardiovascular conditions and risk factors which raises the possibility that the MIND diet association with cognitive decline may be through its effects on cardiovascular disease," the authors […]

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