Preventive Neurology

If you take #BrainHealth seriously you need to focus on diet. Do you buy into 'you are what you eat' ? This ambitious systematic  literature  review has identified 10 foods and 7 nutrients with evidence for causal cardio-metabolic effects. Any intervention that reduces your vascular risk burden should reduce all-cause dementia and improve your Brain Health.  The foods that were found to have  protective effects : fruits vegetables beans/legumes nuts/seeds whole grains fish yogurt fibre seafood omega-3s polyunsaturated fats potassium The food found to have  harmful effects:  unprocessed red meats processed meats sugar-sweetened beverages glycemic load (sugar or carbohydrates) trans-fats sodium/salt.  There is nothing new here and most of this should be obvious to you and is currently included in mots dietary guidelines. The elephant in the room is economics; in modern economies people eat what they can afford. Modifying the nation's diet is g

Information rarely changes health outcomes on its own, which is why we need policy #PreventiveNeurology #BrainHealth Although we have known about the cardiovascular risks associated with the consumption of trans fatty acids (TFAs) for decades little has been done by individuals to reduce their consumption. Therefore when the state of New York put in place restrictions on their use in 11 counties between 2007 and 2011 they set-up an experiment. This experiment now reports out: the study below included 25 counties and compared cardiovascular outcomes in the TFA non-restricted populations of 14 counties with the populations in the 11 TFA restricted counties. Three or more years after restrictions were put in place the people living in the counties with TFA restrictions experienced a significant decline in combined myocardial infarction and stroke events (-6.2%) compared with the TFA non-restricted populations.  I sincerely hope you appreciate the significance of these findings?