A team of researchers from Ben-Gurion University has shown that adopting a healthy diet leads to weight loss associated with a slowing down of brain aging. Explanations.
Does the Green Mediterranean Diet Rejuvenate the Brain? In any case, this is what researchers from the Ben Gurion University of the Negev (Israel) have just shown. Concretely, they were interested in the files of 102 people suffering from obesity and who participated in a larger study. Called Direct-Plus, this is a clinical trial conducted on 300 participants for 18 months, which tests the benefits of the green Mediterranean diet, richer in polyphenols than the traditional Mediterranean diet, on brain aging.
It has been known for several years that obesity contributes to premature aging of the brain, thanks in particular to neuroimaging. Brain age can thus be assessed independently of a person’s age. The Ben-Gurion University researchers wanted to know if weight loss following a change in lifestyle could have an impact on this accelerated aging.
Better liver health
They analyzed the brain scans of the 102 participants with obesity, taken at the start and at the end of the study, 18 months later. Results: A 1% reduction in body weight led to a decrease of nearly 9 months in patients’ expected brain age. These results were published in the journal eLife. Thus a change in lifestyle, or the switch to a green Mediterranean diet, has slowed the aging of the brain.
Other benefits at 18 months have also been observed in patients, particularly in the liver. “This attenuation in brain age was significantly associated with improved liver biomarkers, decreased liver fat, and visceral and deep subcutaneous adipose tissue after 18 months of intervention.“, specify the researchers from Ben-Gurion University in their article published in eLife.
“Our study highlights the importance of a healthy lifestyle, including reduced consumption of processed foods, sweets and beverages, in maintaining brain health“, says Gidon Levakov, doctor of cognitive and brain sciences and co-author of the study.