Brain Aging Tied to MIND Diet Scores

The Mediterranean-DASH Intervention for Neurodegenerative Delay (MIND) diet, which combines elements of the Mediterranean and blood pressure-lowering DASH diets, was associated with slower structural brain changes associated with aging in a prospective cohort study.

Over a median follow-up of 12.3 years, middle-age and older adults with a higher adherence to the MIND diet had slower gray matter loss and less ventricular enlargement, reported Changzheng Yuan, ScD, of Zhejiang University in Hangzhou, China, and colleagues in the Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery & Psychiatry.

For every three-unit increase in MIND diet scores, there was a 0.279 cm³ per year (95% CI 0.089-0.469) slower decline in total gray matter volume, representing a 20.1% reduction in age-related changes and 2.5 years of reduced brain aging over 12 years.

People with higher MIND diet scores also had a slower increase in lateral ventricular volume (-0.071 cm³ per year, 95% CI -0.125 to -0.017) and the left lateral ventricle (-0.041 cm³ per year, 95% CI -0.070 to -0.013). This reflected an attenuation of age-related changes by approximately 8.0% for lateral ventricular volume and 8.8% for the left lateral ventricle, roughly equal to a 1-year delay in brain aging over the study period.

“For a very long time, the public and the scientific community have been interested in whether our diet can improve brain health. This study is one big step in that direction by using objective outcomes, thanks to brain imaging, and by using multiple assessments of diet and brain volume over a long period of time,” noted Mohammad Talaei, MD, MPH, PhD, of Queen Mary University of London, who wasn’t involved with the study.

“On the one hand, without evidence from human experimental studies, it would be hard to use such findings to make decisive recommendations,” Talaei wrote on the U.K. Science Media Centre website. “On the other hand, observational evidence remains the most feasible source of knowledge for now, which is why improvements in observational studies are so important.”

The MIND diet pattern supports regular consumption of green leafy and other vegetables, berries, nuts, whole grains, olive oil, poultry, fish, and beans; limited consumption of butter and margarine, cheese, red meat, pastries, sweets, and fried fast foods; and moderate wine intake.

Earlier studies have tied the MIND diet to a lower likelihood of hippocampal sclerosis and higher subcortical brain region volumes. Clinical trial data, however, showed the MIND diet had a similar effect on cognition and brain MRI outcomes as mild caloric restriction over 3 years, possibly due to high adherence of the control group to lifestyle advice.

Yuan and co-authors analyzed data from 1,647 adults in the Framingham Heart Study Offspring cohort who were assessed with three food frequency questionnaires and two or three brain MRIs between 1999 and 2019. MIND diet scores were calculated from food questionnaire data.

Participants had a mean age of 60.9 years and 54.3% were women. None had evidence of stroke or dementia at baseline.

The median MIND diet score was 6.8 out of 15. People with higher scores tended to be women, college educated, and were less likely to smoke or have obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure, or cardiovascular disease.

Berries and poultry were specifically linked with slower increments in ventricle volumes; poultry intake also was tied to a slower decline in gray matter. Sweets and fried fast foods correlated with faster decline. Unexpectedly, higher whole grain intake was associated with worse brain changes while higher cheese intake was associated with more favorable outcomes.

“Unexpected findings, such as the associations of whole grain and cheese with several brain imaging markers, highlight the need for further research to clarify specific food recommendations,” Yuan and colleagues observed.

“While the findings underscore the translational potential of the MIND diet as a public health strategy, they also highlight the necessity for high-quality, long-term intervention studies to further validate and refine these dietary approaches for broader clinical and policy applications,” they wrote.

The study was observational and residual confounding may have influenced outcomes. Because food intake was self-reported, recall bias and measurement error were possible, the researchers acknowledged.

The findings are based on a sample of middle-age and older adults primarily of Caucasian ancestry, and results may not apply to other populations.