Mediterranean Diet

Adopting a Mediterranean-style diet may help protect your brain as you age, numerous studies show. [1]
At least 2 studies concluded that people’s risk for dementia declined when they ate the Mediterranean-DASH Intervention for Neurogenerative Delay (MIND) diet. Think of it as sort of a hybrid of the original Mediterranean diet and the DASH (Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension) diets, both of which were designed to improve heart health.

The holidays are officially over, and although you may still be picking at leftovers and what’s left in the office cookie tin, it’s time to start thinking about how to make THIS year a healthy year… again!
U.S. News & World Report, which calls itself “the global authority in rankings and consumer advice,” has just published its annual assessment of the year’s Best Diets. The platform offers pretty much all the information you could possibly ask for on more than 40 diets.

Do a quick search for “Mediterranean diet” on our site and you will find oodles of articles espousing the health benefits of this eating lifestyle.  In December, yet another study showed that people who eat a Mediterranean-style diet have a lower risk of cardiovascular disease – possibly even as low as those taking statin drugs.
Let’s see why this diet can be so good for the heart.
Lead study author Shafqut Ahmad, Ph.D., a research fellow at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, said of the findings:

In a study of more than 3,500 individuals with psoriasis, adopting a healthier diet was associated with an improvement in their symptoms – particularly a Mediterranean diet. [1]
In fact, the closer someone adhered to the Mediterranean diet, the less burdensome their psoriasis became, regardless of whether or not the individual was obese.

A Mediterranean diet, one of the healthiest eating patterns in the world, can lower the risk of stroke, especially in women, according to a new study. [1]
Men didn’t reap the same benefits from this widely-accepted healthy diet, which emphasizes consumption of fish, nuts, fruit and vegetables, and beans, and limits red meat and dairy products.
Lead researcher Dr. Phyo Myint, a clinical chair of medicine at the University of Aberdeen School of Medicine in Scotland, said:

Researchers announced in April that they may have figured out how eating meat causes heart disease. The nutrient choline, an essential nutrient found in meat and eggs, may feed a certain gut bacteria which produce a compound that makes blood sticky and prone to form blood clots. These blood clots can lead to heart attacks and strokes. [1]

Can eating pasta make you healthier and make you eat less saturated fat? According to a study presented at the Obesity Society’s annual meeting in November of 2016, the answer is “yes.” [1]

Between 30-40% of American adults have nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD), a condition with no visible signs that rarely causes symptoms. Despite its near-invisibility, NAFLD raises the risk of heart disease, diabetes, cirrhosis, and liver cancer. What’s more, a recent study suggests that people with a high-risk variant of the PNPLA3 gene are much more likely to have NAFLD if they’re obese than if they’re thin. [1]

Doctors have warned for decades that saturated fat clogs arteries and causes heart disease, and for decades the public believed it. I mean, why wouldn’t we? Well, now 3 world-renowned cardiologists are saying that claim is just bunk – that drinking whole milk and eating real butter is not dangerous, after all. They’re calling the claim that saturated fat leads to heart disease “just plain wrong.” [1]
Better yet, people who are still a little bit concerned about eating saturated fat can balance the score, so to speak, with a few simple lifestyle changes.

In a new study looking at the effects of a Mediterranean diet on people with poor heart health, the popular diet appeared to help heart patients more than statin drugs.