The Brain Ages Better With A Healthy Diet, Study Shows

What we eat ultimately influences the makeup of our body, and a new study shows that this is particularly true for the makeup of our brain.

Recent findings published in the journal Neurology reveal that people who snack on fruits and vegetables can preserve their memory and thinking skills for 25 percent longer than those who are constantly craving junk food and other unhealthy treats.

"It is likely that a healthy diet has effects on cardiovascular risk factors and cardiovascular disease, and that this is an important mechanism for reducing the risk of cognitive decline," said lead study author Andrew Smyth, a researcher at the Population Health Research Institute at McMaster University in Ontario and the HRB Clinical Research Facility Galway at the National University of Ireland in Galway, via Today Health.

Researchers at the McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada looked at the data of more than 28,000 older adults from 40 countries for the study, examining the mental function of participants based on their diet.
They devised a "healthy eating" index and then categorized participants based on the type of food they regularly consumed.

The exam looked at 10 different aspects of cognition that included tests on the individual's ability to recall certain objects, mathematical abilities and attention span, with a maximum score of 30. If any ones score dropped by three points or more, they were considered to have declined mentally.

Over the course of the study, 4,699 people suffered a decline in thinking and memory. However, those who consumed the most nutritious diets were 24 percent less likely to deal with cognitive declines when compared to those who had unhealthy diets.

Though study does not recommend any particular diet, it does show that eating healthy can make a great impact on your life.

"The difference in our study is we didn't prescribe a particular diet or explore for a particular diet pattern," added Smyth, via CNN. "We just wanted to look at a diverse cohort of people from all around the world and analyze what their risk for cognitive decline would be if they consumed what most organizations would consider a 'healthy diet'."

As future studies will be needed to cement the connection between eating healthy and preserved memory, researchers believe it may have something to do with lowered anti-inflammatory levels that are associated with eating certain foods.