The Mediterranean diet has been extolled for its health benefits, and a new study has found something new about it.
A groundbreaking new study has found that a Mediterranean diets could have a huge impact on your brain — a very, very good impact.
Eating a diet that is rich in legumes, whole grains, fish, and fruits and veggies has been shown in a recent study to result in a more youthful brain for older individuals, according to a Fox News report.
It’s not the first time researchers have posited such tremendous brain benefits for the Mediterranean diet, especially when it comes to preventing the development of brain diseases like Alzheimer’s and dementia, but for this study, author Yian Gu of Columbia University wanted to see how the diet affected elderly people who had normal cognitive functions, according to the report.
“Among cognitively healthy older adults, we were able to detect an association between higher adherence to a Mediterranean type diet and better brain measures,” Yu was quoted in the Fox report.
A total of 674 elderly people were surveyed for the study. They answered questions on their eating habits and provided scans of their brains via magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). The study’s results were interesting: those who were on the Mediterranean diet had more brain volume and more gray and white matter compared to those who didn’t follow this diet.
And for those who ate more fish and ate less red meat, there was more gray matter volume.
Of course, more research will be necessary, although the volume of evidence showing that the Mediterranean diet is of tremendous benefit to the human body. Scientists will need to rule out these effects being due to a healthier brain tending to be predisposed to healthier diets.
There is also the point that a person who eats lots of fish typically doesn’t eat as much meat, so it is difficult to separate the two. Instead, it’s more likely that other factors are important.
A news release on the findings were published on Columbia University’s website, which can be found here.
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