MIND Diet Can Reduce Your Brain's Ageing By 7.5 years, Study

What you eat can actually keep your mind young. The MIND diet, which is short for Mediterranean-DASH Diet Intervention for Neurodegenerative Delay, is a blend of the "Mediterranean and DASH (Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension) diets".

If you are regular about a specific diet that contains "brain healthy" foods, you could slow down "cognitive decline" by 7.5 years among the older patients, says a new study, according to indianexpress.

The experiment looked at cognitive change over 4.7 years among 960 older adults that were free of "dementia on enrollment". Their average participants were of an age of 81.4 years.

Among the elderly, those who stuck to the MIND diet strictly, showed that their cognitive structure could be about 7.5 years younger than others.

 "Prevention of cognitive decline, the defining feature of dementia, is now more important than ever," said one of the researchers, Martha Clare Morris, nutritional epidemiologist at Rush University Medical Centre in Chicago, Illinois, the US.

Eating well helps your brain to boost its mental and intellectual growth. "The brain requires nutrients just like your heart, lungs or muscles do," according to bbc.

So what is this wonder MIND diet? It has 15 dietary components, including 10 "brain-healthy food groups and five unhealthy groups---red meat, butter and stick margarine, cheese, pastries and sweets, and fried or fast food," according to indianexpress.

The strict MIND diet nut would require at least "three servings of whole grains, a green leafy vegetable and one other vegetable every day---along with a glass of wine - snack most days on nuts, have beans every other day or so, eat poultry and berries at least twice a week and fish at least once a week."

The unhealthy foods include less than one tablespoon of butter a day, sweets and pastries, whole fat cheese, and fried or fast food at less than one serving per week

The article was published in the journal Alzheimer's & Dementia: The Journal of the Alzheimer's Association.