Eating a healthy diet can reduce your risk

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• A new study tracking diet and cognitive performance over 70 years has found that people who eat healthier foods tend to have better cognitive performance over time.
• The study involved more than 3,000 individuals born in the UK in 1946.
• The findings suggest that a consistent healthy diet from childhood through middle age is important for maintaining brain health in later life.

Diet is important for keeping your brain sharp as you age, and new research suggests the earlier you start eating healthily, the better.

In the first study of its kind, researchers tracked the diet and eating habits of more than 3,000 people living in the UK over a 70-year period to look for correlations with cognitive performance. Those who ate the highest quality diets tended to have better cognitive performance over time compared to their peers who ate unhealthy diets.

“Cognitive decline can begin as early as age 65, but there is a long latency period of 10 to 15 years before symptoms appear, during which time brain changes may already be occurring. So we thought that diet much earlier than age 65 might be an important factor in later cognitive function, and our preliminary findings suggest that this may be the case,” Dr. Kelly Carra, a recent graduate of the Gerald J. and Dorothy R. Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University and author of the study, told Healthline.

Carla this week: Nutrition 2024The results of the study have not yet been published in a scientific journal and are considered preliminary.

Still, there are compelling and practical implications for anyone interested in maintaining brain health through diet. Experts recommend that diets rich in fruits, vegetables, fish, and whole grains, e.g. Mediterranean diet — is a good place to start.

“The findings are consistent with similar studies and truly demonstrate the importance of early childhood diet in influencing later health, in this case cognitive health,” he said. Kristin Kirkpatrick, MS RD, A dietitian at the Cleveland Clinic, Regenerative MedicineShe was not involved in the study.

Kara's research is Medical Research Council National Health and Development Surveyhas been collecting health and medical information from the UK public for nearly 100 years.

The study was conducted on a cohort of 3,059 people, evenly split between men and women, born in 1946. Those who are still alive are 78 years old and are still participating in the study.

Members of the cohort reported information about their diet at five different time points (ages 4, 36, 43, 53, and 63). They also recorded their cognitive performance based on standardized tests seven times during the period between ages 8 and 69.

“I've never seen a cohort where diet has been measured as early as this cohort. Diet was first assessed at age 4, then throughout middle age and now into old age,” Carra said.

Meals: Healthy Eating Index (HEI)takes into account 13 different components, including fruits, vegetables, whole grains and added sugars, to create a composite score for a person's diet.

The assessment also used diaries and was conducted over several days rather than just one, providing more detailed information about the quality of an individual's diet.

“We now have a much more accurate picture of what that person's habitual diet was at the time. Instead of a single measurement, we can take an average over multiple days and essentially represent their diet over that 10-year period,” Kara said.

Particularly, people who ate a healthier diet in midlife (starting at age 43) had better cognitive performance up until age 69. Specifically, 47% of people who ate the poorest quality diet also had the poorest cognitive performance, while 48% of people who ate the best quality diet also had the best cognitive performance.

“This means general ability across all domains, including language, memory, reaction time and visual processing,” Cara said.

The right foods support brain health, Oxidative stress Slows age-related cognitive decline.

Foods that are good for the brain Berries, nuts, and oily fish are high in antioxidants and healthy fats.

• Pumpkin seeds
• coffee
• salmon
• herring
• sardine
• Walnuts

“Include colourful fruits and vegetables in your diet (aim for at least six colours each day), have one serving of leafy greens each day and limit alcohol and ultra-processed foods. If oily fish isn't your thing, consider an omega-3 supplement,” says Kirkpatrick.

Both Carla and Kirkpatrick stress the importance of the whole diet, rather than thinking about specific individual components. The key to a lifelong healthy diet is consistency and finding the right balance that works for you.

“The idea here is that if I can be inspired by knowing that what I eat today actually has an impact on my future in terms of my cognitive performance, then that might be another reason to say this is worth doing,” Carla said.

The first study tracked the diet and cognitive performance of more than 3,000 people over a 70-year period.

The researchers also found that people who tend to eat a higher quality diet tend to have better cognitive performance over the long term compared to those who eat less healthy diets.

Experts say that looking at diet holistically, and eating a diet rich in fruits, vegetables, whole grains and fish, such as the Mediterranean diet, is important for brain health.

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