HHS HealthBeat (June 15, 2010)

Foods and Alzheimer’s

From the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, I’m Ira Dreyfuss with HHS HealthBeat.

This is not to say we can eat our way to a lower risk of getting Alzheimer’s disease. But researchers have seen that people who eat more of certain foods and less of others had a lower risk.

Nikolaos Scarmeas and colleagues at Columbia University Medical Center looked at data on more than 2,100 people. Scarmeas reports benefit for people who ate more salad dressing, nuts, fish, poultry, and certain fruits and vegetables, and fewer high-fat dairy products, red meats, organ meats, and butter:

"Subjects who were following this combination of dietary habits had almost a 40 percent reduction in risk for getting Alzheimer’s disease over the course of about four years of follow-up."  (11 seconds)

The study in Archives of Neurology was supported by the National Institutes of Health.

Learn more at hhs.gov.

HHS HealthBeat is a production of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. I’m Ira Dreyfuss.

Last revised: November 21, 2011