News for those at risk from Alzheimer’s.
People who mostly follow the Mediterranean diet lower their risk of mental decline — and they lower this risk even more if they exercise, new studies suggest. In a 2006 study, Columbia University Medical Center researcher Nikolaos Scarmeas, MD, and colleagues showed that elderly New Yorkers whose eating habits most resemble the Mediterranean diet have about a 40% lower risk of Alzheimer’s disease than do those with poor diets. A new study of 1,410 older men and women living in France confirms that those who most adhere to the Mediterranean diet have slower age-related cognitive decline than those whose diets least resemble the Mediterranean diet. And in an update on their earlier study, Scarmeas and colleagues report that among the 1,880 mixed race/ethnicity Americans in their ongoing study, those who get the most physical activity get the least Alzheimer’s disease. – From Web MD