Mediterranean Diet Could Be Key To Avoiding Dementia and Strokes

Recent research shows that sticking to a Mediterranean diet could help older people avoid stroke and dementia .
The diet, which has great benefits for the heart and overall good health, has been proven to reduce strokes in the brain.
New evidence has suggested that such strokes can lower cognitive function in later years.
The Mediterranean diet heavily features fruits, vegetables, oily fish, olive oil and nuts, whilst omiting many meats and many fats used in English and American diets .
“The relationship between this type of brain damage and the Mediterranean diet was comparable with that of high blood pressure,” stated Dr. Nikolaos Scarmeas, a neurologist at Columbia University Medical Center, the study leader. “In this study, not eating a Mediterranean-like diet had about the same effect on the brain as having high blood pressure .”
The study involved 712 participants; they were divided into three groups based on how rigidly they stuck to the Mediterranean diet. Researchers did a brain scan to see the infarcts, strokes in the brain that may not show symptoms in the person, which had occurred.
Patients who adhered to the Mediterranean diet at a moderate level had their risk of an infarct lowered by 21 percent and those who stuck to the diet strictly saw their risk for an infarct decrease by 36 percent.
Scarmeas said that given that the results of the study were promising, researchers cannot still be sure that the Mediterranean diet itself is responsible for the reduction in strokes, as the study was not a clinical trial.