Nutrition Against Disease

Who’s Fault Is It?

What if I told you that cognitive decline is NOT an inevitable part of aging? Sure, we all have certain genetic predispositions to disease. However, that is not a sentence. We are in greater control of our health forecast than most know. The problem is, finding accurate resources. In the last decade researchers have made great advances in linking nutrition with disease. Suggesting that a full lifestyle “makeover” can improve the way your brain works. A study performed by AARP found that while over 90 percent of American believe brain health to be important, few know how to maintain or improve it.

Our first thought is to ask our doctor, right? Perhaps, but many people find the question of nutrition falls on deaf ears. The Journal of the American Medical Association reports it takes seventeen years on average for scientific discoveries to be put into day-to-day clinical practice. Seventeen years!! Considering the lack of priority nutrition takes in wellness visit, its likely much longer. We are slow in dissemination of information and even slower to create guideline or update them with advanced knowledge. Many of our current nutritional and practice guidelines are extremely outdated or conflicting with current information.

In my clinic when I ask a patient how they perceive their memory they often laugh, look at their spouse and say, “I don’t know what normal is” . It turns out that genetic variation only accounts for 1%. So, why do some people live well into their 90’s and beyond, maintaining vigorous brain and body health, and others don’t? That is what scientists like neurobiologist, Milia Kivipelto, at Stockholm’s Karolinska Institutet are studying. She leads the FINGER trial (Finnish Geriatric Intervention Study to Prevent Cognitive Impairment and Disability), the worlds first ongoing, large scale, long-term randomized control trial to measure the impact that our dietary and lifestyle choices have on our cognitive health.

The trial involves over 1,200 at risk older adults, half of whom are enrolled in nutritional counseling and exercise programs, as well as social support to reduce psychosocial risk factors for cognitive decline such as depression, loneliness, and stress. The other half, the control group, receives standard care.

After the first two years, preliminary reports were published, and they were striking. The overall cognitive function of those in the intervention group increased by 25 percent compared to the controls. Executive function increased by 83 percent! Executive function is one of the key dysfunctions I see in my clinical practice related to Parkinson disease. Executive function is controlled by the frontal lobe of the brain, and is responsible for planning, decision making, sequencing, and some social interaction. The preliminary results also showed a 150 percent improvement in brain processing speed, which is the rate a person takes in information and reacts to it.

According to the Aging Research Center at Karolinska Institutet, their Nordic Nutrition Recommendations are in line with what we call Mediterranean food. A diet rich in vegetables, extra virgin olive oil, nuts, and legumes, low intake of red meat (grass fed beef is a good saturated fat), low intake of dairy, and mild to moderate alcohol consumption (preferably red wine such as Pinot noir which is high in the antioxidant, reservatrol)

This is one of many distinguished studies I plan to share with you, highlighting the power that a lifestyle makeover can have on improving the way our brain functions; providing the best evidence to date that cognitive decline is not an inevitable part of aging . Personally, I’ve discovered the data is overwhelming, and I won’t wait the average seventeen years until it becomes mainstream. I also don’t plan to wait until I, nor my patients, have a diagnosis of dementia before taking action.