Including beef, chicken or pork in your Mediterranean diet may help prevent Alzheimer’s disease, a study suggests.
Researchers at the University of California, San Diego found that a modified version of the famous diet, which included foods from the typical low-carb, high-fat keto diet, lowered levels of a neurotransmitter in the brain linked to cognitive decline.
The Mediterranean diet usually contains fish, beans and nuts as the main source of protein, but this research shows that it can be extended to other high-fat meats as well.
Whether meat is healthy for a person is up for debate. While many have emphasized the value of veganism in previous research, more data is starting to come out showing the benefits of beef and chicken in the diet.
Researchers found that a Mediterranean diet that uses beef or chicken instead of fish may be more beneficial to the brain in people with cognitive problems (file photo)
The Mediterranean diet consists of a good dose of fish, nuts, berries, whole grains and other goods.
It is part of the local cuisine in countries such as Greece, Spain and other countries on the southern side of Europe.
In recent decades, researchers began to discover that people who lived in these regions were less likely to have Alzheimer’s disease, heart disease, and other chronic diseases.
Over time, they learned that this was because of their diet. In particular, the fatty oils in fish and olive oil have been cited as a miracle for Alzheimer’s prevention.
Now, in new research published in the Alzheimer & Dementia magazineresearchers found that mixing the famed diet with the keto diet can be just as valuable.
The keto diet has grown in popularity in recent years. It cuts out almost all carbohydrates and replaces the body’s primary source of energy with fat instead.
Subscribers to the diet will often avoid bread and other foods, focusing instead on non-starchy vegetables and meats.
The UCSD team, working with researchers at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, combined the diets.
They collected data from 20 participants, 11 were cognitively normal and nine showed signs of mild cognitive impairment.
Each was instructed to follow either a modified Keto Mediterranean diet or another low-fat, high-carbohydrate diet.
They would follow the diet for six weeks, then take a six-week break to “wash out” the other diet, before going on the other diet again for another six weeks.
Stool samples were collected from each participant at the start of the study and after each six-week period.
Researchers were looking for signs of a neurotransmitter called gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA) and microbes responsible for its production.
High levels of GABA, also linked to anxiety, are believed to put increased stress on the brain and cause further aging.
This leads to more plaques and other damage to the vital organ, causing cognitive decline over time.
The researchers found that levels of GABA and associated microbes were lowest after a person ate the modified keto Mediterranean diet in people who already had some cognitive impairment.
This means that the diet that included all the staples of Greek and Spanish cuisine, but also allowed large amounts of chicken and beef, was good for the brain.
“We hope that a better understanding of this complex relationship between nutrition, cognitive status and gut health will lead to new interventions to prevent and treat Alzheimer’s disease,” said Dr. Suzanne Craft, a doctor of geriatrics at Wake Forest.
However, the effects in people whose brains were already healthy were limited.