- A certain eating pattern may lower your risk for dementia.
- This diet could reduce your risk by up to 29 percent.
- Even people who have developed biomarkers for Alzheimer’s disease may see a benefit.
It’s easy to feel anxious when you think about dementia, a devastating condition that impacts nearly 10 percent of older adults in the U.S. Researchers still don’t fully understand why some people develop dementia while others don’t, although age, genetics, cardiovascular health, and lifestyle all play important roles. The latest research suggests that following a high-quality, healthier, less inflammatory eating pattern may help lower your risk.
Now, will diet alone completely change whether you develop dementia or Alzheimer’s? Probably not. But the findings suggest you might have more power when it comes to lowering your risk than you think. Here’s why.
Meet the experts: Anja Mrhar, MSc, lead study author and research assistant at Karolinska Institutet; Clifford Segil, DO, a neurologist at Providence Saint John’s Health Center in Santa Monica, California; and Keri Gans, RD, author of The Small Change Diet
What did the study find?
The study, which was published in JAMA Network Open, looked at the diet and health data of 1,865 older adults who participated in a long-term health study in Sweden. The participants, who were followed for up to 15 years, didn’t have dementia at the beginning of the study.
The researchers analyzed the inflammatory potential of the participants’ diets using something called the Empirical Dietary Inflammatory Index and then stacked that against the participants’ health records. “Scores indicating lower inflammatory potential generally reflected greater intake of items such as vegetables, tea, and coffee, and lower intake of red and processed meat, refined grains, and soft drinks,” says Anja Mrhar, MSc, lead study author and research assistant at Karolinska Institutet.
During the 15-year study period, 240 of the participants were diagnosed with dementia. But after looking at the diagnoses and diet scores, researchers found that people who followed diets that were lower in inflammatory potential also had a lower risk of being diagnosed with dementia. This held true, even among those who already had blood biomarkers indicating a higher risk of Alzheimer’s disease.
Ultimately, people who had certain biomarkers for developing Alzheimer’s disease but followed a low-inflammation diet had up to a 29 percent lower relative risk of developing dementia during follow-up.
How might this work?
While this is still being studied, a growing body of research suggests that there is a strong inflammatory component to developing Alzheimer’s disease. Meaning, if your body is high in inflammation, your risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease increases. (Keep in mind: This is not a slam dunk link—it’s still being studied.)
“Biological changes linked to Alzheimer’s disease and neurodegeneration can begin years before symptoms appear, but their presence does not mean that dementia will inevitably develop,” Mrhar says. “Lifestyle factors such as diet may remain relevant during this early, clinically silent stage.”
She underscores the findings that suggest following a diet low in inflammation may help lower the risk of Alzheimer’s disease, even if you start to have changes in your body that would suggest you’re developing the condition. “Maintaining a healthier diet and better overall diet quality may still be relevant to dementia risk, even among older adults who already show signs of increased risk,” Mrhar says.
It may also be that people who follow a healthy, low-inflammatory eating pattern also follow a brain-healthy lifestyle, says Keri Gans, RD, author of The Small Change Diet.
But this is still a complicated topic, given that diet isn’t the only thing that can increase or decrease inflammation in your body and brain. “Brain inflammation can occur with horrible things like a brain infection or brain tumor,” says Clifford Segil, DO, a neurologist at Providence Saint John’s Health Center in Santa Monica, California.
What does this diet look like?
This is where things get a little tricky. “We did not test a prescribed diet or ask participants to change how they ate,” Mrhar says. “The main idea is that people do not consume foods and nutrients in isolation. The overall combination of foods and beverages consumed over time may be more important than any single food.”
The study also didn’t find that people should avoid things like caffeine, dairy, or other foods that people tend to weed out when they’re trying to follow an anti-inflammatory diet. “In fact, within the specific dietary index used in our study, tea and coffee contributed to scores indicating lower inflammatory potential,” says Mrhar.
If you’re interested in the idea of a low-inflammation diet, Gans suggests focusing on the overall quality of your diet rather than trying to eliminate certain foods. “A balanced eating pattern that emphasizes fruits, vegetables, beans, whole grains, fish, nuts, and healthy fats is a practical approach that supports not only brain health but also overall health as we age,” she says. “ This study reinforces the idea that small, consistent dietary habits may matter more than chasing a single ‘brain-boosting’ food.”
Carina Hsieh, MPH, is the deputy features editor of Women’s Health. She has more than a decade’s worth of experience working in media and has covered everything from beauty, fashion, travel, lifestyle, pets, to health.
She began her career as an intern in the fashion closet at Cosmopolitan where she worked her way up to Senior Sex & Relationships Editor. While covering women’s health there, she discovered her passion for health service journalism and took a break to get her Masters in Public Health. Post-grad school, she worked as a freelance writer and as The Daily Beast’s first Beauty, Health, and Wellness Reporter.
Carina is an alum of the Fashion Institute of Technology and the Yale School of Public Health. She and her French Bulldog, Bao Bao, split their time between Brooklyn and Connecticut. She enjoys reformer Pilates, (slow) running, and smelling the fancy toiletries in boutique fitness class locker rooms.
