Did you know that a balanced diet of nuts, tomatoes, vegetables, fruits and lower intake of high fat dairy products, red meat, and butter can help lower your risks for Alzheimer disease?
Alzheimer's disease the most common form of dementia - a very serious loss of cognitive ability in a person, beyond what might be expected from normal aging. Alzheimer disease is an incurable, degenerative, and terminal disease that's named after the German psychiatrist who first described it in 1906. In general, this is diagnosed in people over the age of 65, but earlier onset of Alzheimer disease can also occur.
In early stages of Alzheimer's, the most common symptom is the inability to acquire new memories. As Alzheimer disease progresses, other symptoms include confusion, mood swings, language problems, and memory loss. Eventually, the disease will lead to death, with the average life expectancy lasting about 7 years from diagnosis. Alzheimer disease is not only devastating for the sufferer, but also for the families of the affected person.
While there's currently no cure for this disease, studies have found that you could lower your risk of Alzheimer disease by following certain types of healthy diets. Below is one sample study that found consuming a diet high in vegetables, fruits, nuts, and low in red meat, high fat dairy products, and butter - such as a balanced vegetarian diet - helped to lower risks of Alzheimer's disease. We briefly summarized the study below:
This study attempted to asses the association between diet and Alzheimer's disease by analyzing dietary patterns of food combination. 2148 elderly subjects without dementia, in New York, aged over 65 years of age participated. Their dietary information was provided and evaluated every 1.5 years.
In this study, 253 subjects developed Alzheimer's Disease during a follow-up of 3.9 years. The researchers discovered a diet pattern that was strongly associated with lower risk of Alzheimer's. They described this particular diet pattern as follows:
A diet with high intake of salad dressing, nuts, fish, tomatoes, poultry, cruciferous vegetables, fruits, and dark and green leafy vegetables and a lower intake of high-fat dairy products, red meat, organ meat, and butter.
In essence, this is a diet that includes some white meat, and lots of fruits and vegetables, and small amounts of red meats and high fat dairy products. While a balanced vegetarian diet doesn't exactly fit the bill here, but it contains all the key aspects - high consumption of vegetables, legumes, and fruits.
As I was writing this up, I thought it would be interesting to see if I'm able to find any studies that confirms the idea that people who follow vegetarian diets have reduced risks for Alzheimer's.
So, I researched on this... and...
Voila, I found studies that confirm this.
For example, in a study done at the Loma Linda University in California, the researchers found that subjects who ate meat were more than twice as likely to develop dementia compared to vegetarian subjects. In this study, over 3,250 California residents participated that included a wide range of diets. They found that subjects who ate meat (including white meat such as chicken and fish) were more than twice as likely to become demented compared to the participants who followed a balanced vegetarian diet. [2]
As you can see, a balanced vegetarian diet significantly reduces your risk for developing Alzheimer disease. Aside from this the health benefits of following a vegetarian meal plan is numerous:
- healthy vegetarian foods reduce risks of hypertension
- vegetarian diets can help prevent childhood obesity
- vegetarian meals help reduce oxidative stress
- eating more fruits and vegetables can even help improve your mood!
- healthy vegetarian meals helps with the management of type 2 diabetes
- vegetarian diets help with weight control
Vegetarian cooking can be simple, healthy, delicious, and exciting - especially if you learn the many Chinese vegetarian dishes you can prepared in Quick and Easy Chinese Vegetarian Cooking.
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