Dementia: The food ‘strongly associated’ with cognitive impairment – limit consumption

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Dementia currently affects 850,000 people in the UK, but the number is on course to grow by 75 percent in the next thirty years. Memory loss patterns are strongly associated with genetics and ageing. The role of diet, however, is becoming increasingly apparent too. One type of food, for instance, has been “strongly” associated with cognitive decline, according to a study.

Dementia is a major cause of dependency and disability among older age groups around the world.

But no treatment is able to alter or halt decline after onset, so prevention is essential.

The condition is characterised by memory loss, confusion, changes in personality and a sharp decline in thinking skills.

The main dietary culprits associated with these symptoms include fried and starchy foods, processed meat and refined sugars.

READ MORE: Dementia: Two of the ‘first problems’ that are not memory loss – symptoms

Further investigations, however, have suggested that pickled foods may be equally detrimental for brain health due to their high sodium content.

One study published in the journal of Global health in 2020 bears out these claims.

Researchers investigating the relationship of cognitive impairment with lifestyle and dietary habits found pickled food to be “strongly” associated with cognitive decline.

The researchers noted: “Among male participants, dietary factors (eg, fried foods, pickled foods, spicy food) were strongly associated with cognitive impairment.”

The pickling process involves putting food into an acidic brine to produce a sour flavour, which is often considered a less healthy option than fermented foods.

Studies among older adults, however, have suggested that higher consumption of fermented tofu, temper and Tahoe, also worsen memory.

“Particularly, a high consumption of tofu, soybean and curd reduces the memory,” explained the authors of a paper published in Scientia Pharmaceutica in 2018.

One of the detriments of pickled foods is their high salt content, which can increase blood pressure post-ingestion.

Having chronically high blood pressure has been shown to accelerate vascular disease and hamper nerve function, and cause Alzheimer’s disease.

Doctor Was Ahmad Buttar, a physician at Sachet Infusions, explained: “Excessive use of salt in pickles increases the sodium content in our diet, which leads to ill health effects like water retention and abdominal bloating.

“Pickles have low nutritional value because of the pickling process.”

This can have long-term implications for brain health, such as high blood pressure. Hypertension, however, may not be the sole cause of brain decline.

In fact, researchers from Weill Cornell Medicine found that resting blood flow in two regions of the brain were reduced after high salt intake.

The study uncovered a gut-brain connection linking high dietary salt intake to cognitive impairment.

Senior author of the study, Doctor Costantino Ladecola, director of the Feil Family Brain and Mind Research Institute at Weill Cornell Medicine, noted: “We discovered that mice fed a high-salt diet developed dementia even when blood pressure did not risk.

“This was surprising since, in humans, the deleterious effects of salt on cognition were attributed to hypertension.”

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