Study Shows a Healthy Diet is Linked with a Slower Pace of Aging, Reduced Dementia Risk

A healthier diet is associated with a reduced dementia risk and slower pace of aging, according to a new study at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health and The Robert Butler Columbia Aging Center. The findings show that a diet-dementia association was at least partially facilitated by multi-system processes of aging. While literature had suggested that people who followed a healthy diet experienced a slowdown in the processes of biological aging and were less likely to develop dementia, until now the biological mechanism of this protection was not well understood. The results are published in the Annals of Neurology.

“We have some strong evidence that a healthy diet can protect against dementia,” said Yian Gu, PhD, associate professor of Neurological Sciences at Columbia Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons and head of the Mailman School Neuroepidemiology Unit, and the other senior author of the study, “But the mechanism of this protection is not well understood.” Past research linked both diet and dementia risk to an accelerated pace of biological aging. [read more]

Source: CUIMC Newsroom