- Adherence to a MIND diet is associated with a lower incidence of dementia and mortality in a new study.
- The MIND diet is based on the Mediterranean and DASH diets, and emphasizes plant-based foods, fish and poultry, with little in the way of saturated fats and sugars.
- The study utilized the DunedinPACE methylation clock, which indicated that the bodies of people most closely following a MIND diet were wearing down more slowly.
A new study from Columbia University in New York suggests that eating a healthy diet can slow the effects of aging on the human body, including on the brain.
The right diet could, in effect, slow down the pace of brain aging, reducing the risk of dementia, suggests the study.
There are several epigenetic clocks researchers use to track the speed of a person’s biological aging process. They measure the state of various key indicators in the body. This study used the DunedinPACE clock developed in part by a senior author of the study, Dr. Daniel Belsky, PhD.
Working with data from 1,644 dementia-free participants who had enrolled in the Framingham Offspring Cohort study, the researchers scored each individual’s long-term adherence to a MIND diet. Participants were 60 years old or older, had a mean age of 69.6 years, and 54% were female.
After 14 years, 140 people developed dementia and 471 had died. The researchers found that people who most closely followed a MIND diet had a slower DunedinPACE clock rating, with a reduced risk of dementia or dying.
Further analysis revealed that a slower DunedinPACE clock was linked to 27% of the association between diet and dementia, and 57% of the link between diet and mortality.
The study is published in the
In developing the DunedinPACE clock, Belsky collaborated with colleagues at Duke University and the University of Otago in Dunedin, New Zealand.
Dr. Menka Gupta, MBBS, a certified functional medicine practitioner at Nutra Nourish, who was not involved in the study, described it as “a…
Read the full article here