What's this
Alzheimer's disease is a highly disabling disorder that induces a gradual loss of mental faculties, making it impossible to carry out common daily activities.
Alzheimer's disease occurs around middle age and manifests itself as cognitive decline caused by degeneration of the central nervous system (CNS) leading to progressive dementia (currently) DON'T curable.
Although modern medicine is POWERFUL in restoring brain function, great strides have been made on mitigating degenerative ADVANCE and preventing its onset; in addition to specific drugs, both statistics and the clinic were able to highlight some essential components of the lifestyle and diet, responsible for:
- Preservation (secondary to family predispositions) of the CNS from Alzheimer's
- Slowing of pathological advancement and worsening
Note: obviously, if applied to a person suffering from Alzheimer's disease, the optimization of diet and lifestyle is NOT a proper cure but rather a preventive and palliative therapy on worsening dementia.
Diet and Lifestyle
We begin by emphasizing that both diet and lifestyle play a fundamental role in the prevention and fight against Alzheimer's disease; numerous scientific insights show that:
regular physical activity and "mental gymnastics" (anthological reading and pursuit of intellectual and managerial habits), constitute 2 primary elements against the onset and worsening of Alzheimer's disease.
Furthermore, taking a nutritional history of affected and healthy people, an evident POSITIVE correlation was highlighted between: diet rich in saturated or hydrogenated fatty acids and cholesterol, with premature and progressive brain degeneration. On the contrary, a diet rich in: dietary fiber (whole grains, legumes, vegetables and fresh fruit), antioxidants (B-carotene, vitamin C, vitamin E, zinc, selenium, polyphenols, etc.), phytosterols and polyunsaturated fatty acids (omega-3 family, omega-6 family, omega-9 family), seems to PROTECT from the onset of Alzheimer's.
Note how ALL the nutritional characteristics mentioned above perfectly reflect the cardinal principles of Mediterranean diet; the diet suitable for preventing and delaying the symptoms of Alzheimer's is therefore the same recommended to reduce the cardiovascular risk.
The Mediterranean diet for Alzheimer's can therefore boast the following beneficial effects:
- Slow down cognitive decline in the elderly
- Reduce the risk of mild cognitive decline (MCI), which is the intermediate stage between physiological decline and Alzheimer's dementia
- Reduce the risk of mild cognitive decline (MCI) leading to Alzheimer's disease proper.
At the moment it is not yet clear what are the preventive mechanisms of the Mediterranean diet against Alzheimer's disease, however, it is possible that the right food choices favor the moderation of triglycerides and cholesterol in the blood, as well as the maintenance of blood sugar and blood sugar. insulinemia within the right limits of normality; moreover, by virtue of the recent discoveries on the lipid up-take of nerve cells (which highlights how much dietary fats can contribute to the composition of neuronal myelin membranes and sheaths), it is possible to hypothesize that saturated and hydrogenated fats, these the latter, especially in the trans configuration, negatively affect the maintenance of brain functions.
Conclusions
Ultimately, that the Mediterranean diet (undertaken in the course of life) is protective for MCI (mild cognitive impairment) and for Alzheimer's is an almost irrefutable statistic.
On the other hand, it is however necessary to specify that the historical-regressive study of the causes, events and pathological course of Alzheimer's disease DON'T it constitutes an analytical protocol that is easy to carry out; this derives from the fact that:
patients with progressive dementia often manifest strong alterations in memory and, at times, even in behavior, complicating the chronological reconstruction (lack of cooperation, aggression, frustration, etc.).
Further investigations are awaited that will be able to more accurately assess and quantify the preventive and palliative role of the Mediterranean diet on Alzheimer's disease.
