Have Diabetes? This Diet May Help Lower Your Dementia Risk by 31%, According to New Research

Your body uses specific cells and hormones to aid in the healing process when you are ill or damaged. This is accomplished by inducing acute inflammation, an inflammatory response that is essential for both healing from wounds and injuries and for recuperating from disease. An illustration of this would be swelling that occurs after spraining your ankle, while in other situations the inflammation is not as noticeable and is frequently invisible. The inflammation progressively disappears as healing takes place.

However, there is a different kind of inflammation called chronic inflammation, which has a tendency to reside in your body like an unwelcome housemate. This kind of inflammation has been linked to numerous chronic illnesses, such as heart disease, type 2 diabetes, and stroke, to mention a few, and can be harmful to your body.

In turn, an increased risk of dementia has been related to these specific disorders, which are classified as cardiometabolic diseases and include heart disease, stroke, and type 2 diabetes. This implies a connection between dementia and persistent inflammation.

Additionally, diet can have a significant impact on escalating inflammation. For instance, higher levels of inflammatory markers in the body have been linked to what scientists regard to be a normal Western diet pattern, which is defined by a high intake of red meat, high-fat dairy products, refined carbohydrates, and highly processed foods. Conversely, eating regimens such as the Mediterranean diet, which emphasize greater proportions of fruits, vegetables, whole grains, fish, and legumes, are typically linked to decreased levels of inflammatory markers.

Even while evidence supports a connection between inflammatory foods and increased inflammation in the body, and because inflammation is linked to cardiometabolic disorders, dementia, and other conditions, researchers are still left with unsolved concerns. For example, even though they already have dementia risk factors, may individuals with cardiometabolic disorders lower their risk of dementia by adopting an anti-inflammatory eating pattern?

How Was This Study Conducted & What Did They Find?

This study included participants from the UK Biobank, a long-term ongoing study including adults from all around the UK between the ages of 40 and 70. Approximately half of the 84,342 participants in this study, who had an average age of 64, were female.

In addition, demographic data about height, weight, blood pressure, smoking status, race and ethnicity, and physical activity were gathered. Additionally, researchers examined bloodwork from participants to see whether a gene associated with a hereditary propensity to Alzheimer’s disease was present or absent.

24-hour dietary evaluations were used to collect diet data at baseline (the start of the study) and up to four more times during the course of the 18-month period. The evaluations quantified the consumption of 32 beverages and 206 meals. These evaluations were used to compute energy and nutrient intake as well as dietary inflammatory index (DII) scores. Based on what is now known about a food’s inflammatory reaction, the DII, which has been verified in prior research, gives foods an inflammatory effect score. Foods that tend to be proinflammatory are given a positive value, whereas foods that are anti-inflammatory are given a negative number. In this particular exam, a lower score is preferable.

To look for changes in the brain over the study period, researchers also performed a brain MRI on a sample of 8,917 participants who did not have any neurological illnesses at the time. Given that dementia is brain-related, this is significant.

The results were in after all the data was gathered and several statistical analysis were performed, including correcting for confounding variables (such demographics).

Those with cardiometabolic disorders who followed an anti-inflammatory diet had a 31% lower risk of dementia than those who followed a pro-inflammatory diet.

Not only that, though. Do you recall the brain MRIs? Aside from having much bigger grey matter volumes in their brains, which indicate less neurodegeneration, the subjects who followed an anti-inflammatory dietary pattern also had significantly smaller white matter hyperintensities, which indicate less vascular injury.

According to researchers, these brain findings are consistent with the notion known as “inflammatory aging,” which holds that abnormalities in the balance between pro- and anti-inflammatory processes as we age are the cause of aging and the development of disease in older adults. Put differently, inflammation and its presence or absence determine how old a person gets.

How Does This Apply to Real Life?

One of the findings that these experts point out is that nutrition is important and a modifiable element in illness prevention. This means that even if you have pre-existing diseases like diabetes, heart disease, or stroke that increase your chance of developing other conditions, like dementia, you can still affect your risk of developing those conditions through modifiable behaviors like eating habits.

Although aging cannot be stopped, you may be able to influence how quickly you age. A variety of articles about brain health and healthy aging can be found in our Healthy Aging Diet Center. For instance, we include recipes and details on the MIND diet, which is a pattern of eating that blends aspects of the DASH diet—a hypertension-focused diet meant to help prevent or delay neurodegenerative delay—with the Mediterranean diet.

We’ve previously written on the effects of sleep on aging, the dangers of excessive sitting, and the kinds of exercise that help delay the aging process. Furthermore, stress might impede cognitive abilities and hasten the aging process. In addition to influencing eating and sleeping patterns, stress can also affect exercise—and so the vicious cycle continues.

The Bottom Line

According to this study, consuming a diet high in anti-inflammatory foods reduced the chance of dementia development in persons with cardiometabolic disorders, such as heart disease, type 2 diabetes, and/or stroke, by 31% as compared to those with proinflammatory foods. This emphasizes how crucial it is to control the behaviors that you can control, such as the foods you eat, the amount of physical activity you get, the amount of restful sleep you get, and the stressors you let into your life.