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Since we don\u2019t have any medical cure for dementia, our first option should be to try to prevent it from happening in the first place.<\/p>\nSince we don\u2019t have any medical cure for dementia, our first option should be to try to prevent it from happening in the first place.<\/p>\n
And a new study published in the journal Neurology<\/em> gives us a clear road map for what to eat and what to avoid.<\/p>\n That\u2019s because researchers found that one type of food increases our risk of dementia by a horrifying 343%<\/p>\n Cut out this one type of food and you\u2019ll probably never have to worry about dementia again.<\/p>\n As humans age, the immune system becomes more pro-inflammatory, in order to launch a stronger response when it senses a threat.<\/p>\n But inflammation damages as much as it repairs, and inflammation has been associated with cognitive decline and dementia.<\/p>\n First, inflammation reduces the amount of brain-derived neurotrophic factor in your nervous system. This protein is responsible for the growth and health of neurons, so allowing inflammation to reduce it is a bad idea.<\/p>\n Second, inflammation kills cells. After all, that is how it kills harmful invaders. But it kills healthy cells in the nervous system too.<\/p>\n Since diet can modify the course of chronic systemic inflammation, a team of Greek scientists wondered whether an anti-inflammatory diet could make enough of a difference to prevent dementia in people whose immune systems would otherwise put them at risk of it.<\/p>\n They chose 1,059 subjects from the Hellenic Longitudinal Investigation of Aging and Diet, a study that tracked the causes of dementia and other neuropsychiatric conditions in Greek seniors.<\/p>\n They assessed their participants every three years and have evaluated each subject twice up to now. At the beginning, none of the participants had dementia.<\/p>\n They assessed their diets via a questionnaire and used the Dietary Inflammatory Index to rank foods according to their pro- and anti-inflammatory properties.<\/p>\n They split their participants into least, moderate, and most inflammatory dietary groups.<\/p>\n A comparison between the most and least inflammatory groups on anti-inflammatory foods is interesting:<\/p>\n 1.\tNine versus 20 servings of fruit per week. Can you guess what they found?<\/p>\n 2.\tSubjects consuming the most inflammatory diets were 3.43 times more likely to develop dementia than those who consumed the least inflammatory diets.\n<\/dl>\n It is great to know that dementia can be prevented so easily by doing something that is completely under our control.<\/p>\n Anti-inflammatory foods include fruit (especially berries), vegetables (especially dark leafy ones), legumes, whole grains, coffee, tea, olive oil, fish, nuts, and seeds.<\/p>\n Pro-inflammatory foods include sugar, refined grains, red meat, processed meat, and large quantities of vegetable oils.<\/p>\n The MIND and Mediterranean diets are the perfect anti-inflammatory diets to prevent dementia.<\/p>\n\n
\n2.\tTen versus 19 vegetable servings per week.
\n3.\tTwo versus four legume servings per week.
\n4.\tNine versus 11 coffee and tea servings per week.\n<\/dl>\n\n1.\tEvery one-point increase on the Dietary Inflammatory Index was associated with a 21% higher dementia risk.<\/p>\n