Welcome to the Nutrition Diva podcast. I'm your host, Monica Reinagle.

Thanks so much for tuning in today. I got a great email recently from Cheryl. She wrote, I've been reading

a lot about the mind diet lately. A 50% reduction in Alzheimer's cases seems pretty significant and even if it's not a

controlled study I'm willing to eat a few more blueberries just to hedge my bets but I'm

not ready to give up cheese quite so easily. How strong is the evidence that eating cheese increases your risk

of Alzheimer's disease? So first, what is this mind diet that Cheryl's talking

about? This is a set of dietary guidelines that were proposed

by researchers at Rush University and this diet combines elements from both the

Mediterranean and the Dash diets.

And these are two dietary patterns

that have a long track record for promoting health and longevity.

But this new version of it

has a particular emphasis on foods and nutrients that have been associated with

cognitive health or in some cases cognitive decline. So the researchers

hypothesized that following their diet could keep your brain healthy. It might preserve your cognitive abilities as you age and

perhaps even ward off dementia and Alzheimer's disease. To test their theory, they reviewed dietary and medical records for almost a thousand people

to see how closely their diets adhered to the Mind Diet guidelines, and then how they fared in terms of their brain health and their

findings made quite a splash. Last year in a study published in the Journal of

the American Alzheimer's Association they reported that those whose diets conformed most closely to the mined diet principles

were only half as likely to develop Alzheimer's as those whose diets conformed the least well. The risk for those whose diets conformed the least well.

The risk for those whose diets conformed only moderately well was still reduced by a third.

And as Cheryl says, that certainly got everyone's attention.

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