To Ward Off Alzheimer's, Try a Diet
Associated Press
April 20, 2006; Page D6
NEW YORK -- A Mediterranean-style diet that appears to cut the risk of heart disease also helps protect against Alzheimer's disease, a new study concludes.
People who followed the diet were up to 40% less likely than those who largely avoided it to develop Alzheimer's during the course of the research, scientists reported.
Still, more research must be done before the diet can be recommended to ward off Alzheimer's, said Nikolaos Scarmeas of the Columbia University Medical Center in New York, lead author of the research. The work was published online by the Annals of Neurology.
The diet he tested includes eating lots of vegetables, legumes, fruits, cereals and fish, while limiting intake of meat and dairy products, drinking moderate amounts of alcohol and emphasizing monounsaturated fats, such as in olive oil, over saturated fats. Previous research has suggested that such an approach can reduce the risk of heart disease.
Prior research has also suggested that certain components of the Mediterranean diet can reduce the risk of developing Alzheimer's, Dr. Scarmeas said. But he said the previous work has tended to focus on individual nutrients like vitamin C or foods like fish. By studying a comprehensive diet instead, the new research could take possible interactions between specific foods and nutrients into account, he said.
The idea that a heart-healthy diet could also help fight Alzheimer's fits in with growing evidence that "the kinds of things we associate with being bad for our heart turn out to be bad for our brain," said Marilyn Albert, a Johns Hopkins neurology professor and spokeswoman for the Alzheimer's Association. The list includes high cholesterol, high blood pressure, obesity, smoking and uncontrolled diabetes, she said.
Dr. Scarmeas and his colleagues followed 2,258 elderly residents of northern Manhattan for an average of four years. The participants were asked in detail about their dietary habits and evaluated every 18 months or so for signs of dementia. None showed any dementia at the start of the study, but by the end, 262 had developed Alzheimer's.
To look for an effect of diet, the researchers gave each participant a score of zero to nine on a scale that measured how closely they followed the Mediterranean diet. Compared to those showing the lowest adherence, those who scored four or five showed 15% to 25% less risk of developing Alzheimer's during the study, while those with higher scores had about 40% less risk.
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