More than 10 million cases of dementia are diagnosed each year, according to Alzheimer’s Disease International (ADI). That’s a new case diagnosed roughly every 3.2 seconds.
In addition to the personal devastation that this diagnosis causes for affected individuals and their loved ones, ADI estimates that the global cost of dementia will rise to $2.8 trillion by 2030, a number that includes the cost of informal care by family and friends as well as direct medical costs. In the face of this daunting trajectory, one new study offers a glimmer of hope by suggesting that following an AI-designed diet may significantly lower one’s risk of developing dementia.
In early July, researchers from Shanghai, China, published the findings of their study on a machine learning optimized diet against dementia risk in the journal Nature Human Behaviour. The studied aimed to identify dietary patterns that may delay the onset of dementia or slow structural and pathological changes in the brain.
The team explains that while there has been work done in this field, “existing observational studies are often hampered by relatively small sample sizes, short-term follow-up, or both, especially considering the long preclinical phase of dementia.”
To fill these research gaps, the scientists used data from the UK Biobank, which collected 24-hour dietary information from 185,012 participants and followed up with them after an average of 10 years to review who developed any type of dementia.
They then undertook a “food-wide association analysis and identified food groups associated with incident dementia” out of this massive cohort. Based on this data, the researchers “ranked the importance of food groups in predicting dementia risk with a machine-learning approach and derived a new dietary pattern for dementia prevention.”
Finally, they compared the magnitude of this new dietary pattern’s association with dementia to that of the MIND diet, a well-known diet that was developed in 2015 to promote healthy brain aging. In short, they investigated which one was likely more effective at preventing the disease.
Results revealed that a number of foods we already know to be nutritious are also linked to reduced risk of dementia. These ingredients include green leafy vegetables, citrus, and berries. Consuming grapefruit was found to be associated with a lower risk of dementia compared to not eating grapefruit at all, and similar results were revealed for sweet peppers and tomatoes. Moderate intake of potatoes, eggs, olive oil, and poultry was recommended as well, with the study providing guidelines for how much of each one should eat per day.
On the opposite end of the spectrum, the machine-learning model and researchers found that some foods could increase the risk of dementia, such as sweetened beverages.
Following the revelation of connections between some foods and risk of dementia, the study created a suggested dietary pattern consisting of seven components, dubbed the “Machine learning-assisted Optimizing Dietary intERvention against demeNtia risk,” or MODERN diet, built around three categories: adequacy, moderation, and restriction.
Foods were then placed into a fitting category, which points to how much of that item one should be consuming. For example, olive oil was placed in the adequacy group, indicating that greater intake of it could reduce the risk of dementia. For the foods in the moderation category, the team suggested that people should aim to have neither too little nor too much of these ingredients, like leafy greens, berries, citrus, potatoes, eggs, and poultry. Unsurprisingly, the team put sweetened beverages in its “restriction” category, noting that people should not consume them.
The MODERN diet aligns with the MIND diet on many important guidelines while providing some key updates to this recommended way of eating.
“While green leafy vegetables and poultry were recommended for higher intake in the MIND diet, the MODERN diet recommended moderate intake,” the team wrote in its discussion. “The MODERN diet also recommends moderate intake of fruits and added citrus fruits to berries in fruit choices, both of which are rich in plant polyphenols and may improve cognitive function by inhibiting oxidative stress in the brain and neurodegenerative pathologies.” Citrus had not previously been recommended in the MIND diet.
A crucial clarification here is the word “moderate,” as the researchers added that “extremely high intakes of these components potentially increased the risk of incident dementia… suggesting that a ‘balanced’ diet derived from hierarchical clustering was related to better cognitive functions.”
One component of the older MIND diet was missing from this new research’s suggested dietary pattern: fish. The authors explained that fish didn’t appear to increase or decrease the risk of dementia in the cohort they studied. However, they pointed out that this could be because the cohort was made up of British people, and fish is “often fried in the United Kingdom,” which may have impacted the results.
Variables like this are why the team concluded that “future studies are warranted to validate this dietary pattern in diverse populations and evaluate its feasibility and effectiveness in clinical and public health practice.” But if continued research supports these findings, it could mean that the MODERN diet is even more effective than its predecessor at reducing the risk of dementia.
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