Wham: Mediterranean Diet Research Shows Great Benefits

Previous research by Nikos Scarmeas, MD, and his colleagues at Columbia University Medical Center (New York) has demonstrated that healthy people who eat a Mediterranean diet lower their risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease. This work, and the research of other scientists as well, has shown that healthy people who follow this type of diet live longer than those who eat a more traditional Western diet, higher in saturated fat and meats and lower in fruits and vegetables.

The Mediterranean diet includes a high intake of vegetables, legumes, fruits, cereals, fish, mono-unsaturated fatty acids; a low intake of saturated fatty acids, dairy products, meat and poultry; and a mild to moderate amount of alcohol.

Now the same group has shown how the above diet may help people with Alzheimer’s disease live longer than patients who eat a more traditional Western diet. The study is published in the September 11, 2007, issue of Neurology, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.

The study followed 192 people with Alzheimer’s disease in New York for an average of four and a half years. During that time, 85 of the people died. Researchers found that those who most closely followed a Mediterranean diet were 76 percent less likely to die during the study period than those who followed the diet the least.

Study author Scarmeas says "The more closely people followed the Mediterranean diet, the more they reduced their mortality. For example, Alzheimer’s patients who adhered to the diet to a moderate degree lived an average 1.3 years longer than those people who least adhered to the diet. And those Alzheimer’s patients who followed the diet very religiously lived an average four years longer.”

“New benefits of this diet keep coming out,” said Scarmeas. “We need to do more research to determine whether eating a Mediterranean diet also helps Alzheimer’s patients have slower rates of cognitive decline, maintain their daily living skills, and have a better quality of life.”

See the excellent Wiki post on this diet linked to the headline of this article.

Dave