Just one serving of this a week can help keep dementia at bay
It’s the disease that most seniors fear the most — and preventing it may be a lot easier than we ever imagined.
I’m talking about Alzheimer’s disease, and more than 5 million Americans are living with it right now.
And Alzheimer’s doesn’t just rob you of your memories and your independence — it also can take a terrible toll on the loved ones around you.
But now an international research team has found that adding one simple food to your diet could keep you from ever developing this horrible disease.
And it takes a lot less of it than you’d probably think.
We’ve heard forever that fish is brain food — and that’s not just something mom said to get you to eat your tuna sandwich.
There’s actually some really solid science proving that the omega-3 fatty acids in fish can safeguard our memories and help us think clearly.
But for years researchers have disagreed about exactly how much fish it takes to protect your brain.
Will the occasional sushi roll do the trick — or do we need to scarf down salmon like a grizzly bear getting ready for hibernation?
That’s the question that a team of American and Dutch scientists set out to answer once and for all.
And they found that getting enough fish to keep your brain sharp is so easy anyone can do it.
Researchers followed close to 900 seniors for five years. And while none of these folks had dementia at the start, they had an average age of 81 — so they were solidly in the Alzheimer’s danger zone.
And it turns out that eating a meal with fish just once or twice a week was enough to ward off age-related memory loss and thinking problems.
That was especially true for what’s called “semantic” memory — remembering what you hear — and “perceptual speed.” That’s sort of like the “Wheel of Fortune” test, where you can quickly compare letters and patterns.
And if you’re wondering what kind of seafood the study participants ate, most dishes were really quite modest. They included simple meals, such as a tuna sandwich or even fish sticks or cakes, right up to crab, shrimp and lobster.
It didn’t matter what the choice was, as long as the seniors had seafood at least once a week.
That was all it took!
Even better, eating seafood rich in omega-3s seemed to work best for people with a special genetic defect that makes them predisposed to Alzheimer’s — something that about 20 percent of us have.
Now, even though only one fish meal a week was enough to produce these wonderful results, I understand that lots of people aren’t big fans of fish.
If you fall into that group, here are three other ways to up your diet with these brain-friendly omega-3s:
- Sprinkle your food with chia seed and walnuts, both good non-seafood sources of this fatty acid.
- Put some grass-fed beef on your grill this summer. While not as good as fish, it can still provide you with a fair amount of omega-3s.
- Find a high-quality fish oil supplement and take it every day.
And for you salmon lovers, stick to the wild variety. Other research has found that farmed salmon just doesn’t contain the omega-3 levels it once did.
That’s probably due to the horribly unnatural diet these fish are fed that contains things like cheap vegetable oils and soy. In the wild, salmon eat other fish and krill, which are naturally high in omega-3.
Sources:
“Stave off cognitive decline with seafood” Rush University Medical Center, May 10, 2016, eurekalert.org
