Healthy Diet May Improve Cognition, Stall Memory Problems

There are more and more reasons why one should maintain a healthy diet.

A recent study published in the journal Neurology found out that a strong relationship occurs between a high diet quality and mental health particularly on reducing the likelihood of getting memory problems or memory loss, CNN said.

But this time, researchers did not prescribe specific diets to improve memory. However, they only discussed the idea in general terms and have just defined 'healthy diet' as something that contains a lot of fruits and vegetables, nuts, fish, moderate alcohol use and minimal red meat-a classic idea found in medical resources.

The difference in our study is we didn't prescribe a particular diet or explore for a particular diet pattern. We just wanted to look at a diverse cohort of people from all around the world and analyze what their risk for cognitive decline would be if they consumed what most organizations would consider a 'healthy diet'," ," said Dr. Andrew Smyth, lead author of the study and a nephrologist at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario Canada.

According to Today, the scholars looked at the health profiles of 27,860 people aged 55 or older from 40 different countries for an average of about five years who underwent a series of cognitive tests before and after the study.

Health ailments of the participants such as diabetes or a history of heart disease, stroke or peripheral artery disease is also taken into consideration.

Their diets as to whether the participants eat fruits and vegetables, nuts and soy proteins, whole grains, deep-fried foods and alcohol is also included.

In the end, it was found out that those who ate healthy have 24% likelihood of avoiding cognitive illnesses and decline.

Also in the group, 4,699 manifest a decline in thinking and memory.

Meanwhile, Medical Daily cited another study from Harvard Medical School which said that having an unhealthy diet contributes the same damages to our brain the way it does to our heart. And, saturated and trans fats that can raise bad cholesterol levels can also lead motivate the build-up of beta-amyloid plaques in the brain. The increased amount of these proteins is an indicator of a possible development of Alzheimer's disease.