Eating a high-quality diet in your youth and middle years may help maintain your brain operating well in your retirement years, according to new preliminary findings from a study of over 3,000 participants monitored for over seven decades (1^✔ ✔Trusted Source
Want to stay mentally sharp longer? Eat a healthy diet now

Go to source

).

The findings add to a growing body of data that a nutritious diet may help prevent Alzheimer’s disease and age-related cognitive loss. Whereas most past research on the topic has concentrated on people’s eating patterns in their 60s and 70s, the current study is the first to follow food and cognitive capacity over the lifespan — from age 4 to 70 — and reveals that the relationships may begin far earlier than previously thought.

Healthy Eating Habits Improve Mental Sharpness in Old Age

“These initial findings generally support current public health guidance that it is important to establish healthy dietary patterns early in life in order to support and maintain health throughout life,” said Kelly Cara, Ph.D., a recent graduate of Tufts University’s Gerald J. and Dorothy R. Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy. “Our findings also provide new evidence suggesting that improvements to dietary patterns up to midlife may influence cognitive performance and help mitigate, or lessen, cognitive decline in later years.”

Cara will present the findings at NUTRITION 2024, the American Society for Nutrition’s main annual meeting from June 29 to July 2 in Chicago.

Plant-Based Diet Rich in Antioxidants Improves Brain Function

Cognitive capacity, or thinking ability, can improve well into middle life. However, it normally declines around the age of 65. More serious disorders, such as dementia, can emerge with age-related changes in the brain.

According to researchers, eating a nutritious diet, particularly one rich in plant-based foods high in antioxidants and mono- and polyunsaturated fats, can improve brain function by lowering oxidative stress and increasing in blood flow to the brain.

Nutritious Diet in Middle Life Helps Maintain High Cognitive Capacity

For the new study, scientists used data from 3,059 adults in the United Kingdom who were recruited as children in the National Survey of Health and Development. Over 75-years, members of the 1946 British Birth Cohort contributed data on nutritional intakes, cognitive results, and other characteristics via questionnaires and tests.

Researchers discovered that food quality was highly related to trends in general, or “global,” cognitive capacity at seven time points. In comparison to their contemporaries, only approximately 8% of people with low-quality diets maintained high cognitive capacity, while only about 7% of people with good-quality diets maintained low cognitive ability over time.

Better Cognitive Health Ensures Enhanced Quality of Life in Old Age

As we get older, cognitive abilities can have a significant impact on our quality of life and independence. For example, at age 68-70, participants in the top cognitive group had significantly superior retention of working memory, processing speed, and overall cognitive function than those in the lowest cognitive group. Furthermore, approximately one-quarter of participants in the lowest cognitive group demonstrated indications of dementia at this time point, but none of those in the highest cognitive group did.

While most persons showed continuous gains in their dietary quality throughout adulthood, the researchers discovered that minor disparities in food quality in childhood appeared to set the tone for later-life dietary patterns, for better or worse. “This suggests that early life dietary intakes may influence our dietary decisions later in life, and the cumulative effects of diet over time are linked with the progression of our global cognitive abilities,” said Cara.

The researchers utilized the 2020 Healthy Eating Index to determine how closely a person’s diet matches with the 2020-2025 Dietary Guidelines for Americans. Participants in the study who maintained the strongest cognitive capacities over time in comparison to their peers ate more recommended foods such as vegetables, fruits, legumes, and whole grains, while eating less sodium, added sugars, and refined grains.

Eat Whole Plant-Based Food to Improve Overall Health

“Dietary patterns that are high in whole or less processed plant-food groups including leafy green vegetables, beans, whole fruits and whole grains may be most protective,” according to Cara. “Adjusting one’s dietary intake at any age to incorporate more of these foods and to align more closely with current dietary recommendations is likely to improve our health in many ways, including our cognitive health.”

Because the study participants were primarily Caucasian from across the United Kingdom, the researchers stated that more research would be required to assess whether the findings would apply to groups with greater racial, cultural, and nutritional variety. They also noted that changes in research emphasis and techniques during the long-term trial resulted in some gaps and discrepancies in data gathering. Despite these constraints, the researchers were able to generate global cognitive ability percentile rank scores by combining data from numerous cognitive domains to assess how individuals compared to their counterparts at different ages and over time.

References:

1. Want to stay mentally sharp longer? Eat a healthy diet now
   (https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1048952)

Source-Medindia