Is your memory as good as it used to be?

While a growing body of research suggests that a new diet could slow the aging of your brain and improving memory, thinking and decision making.

Our Christine spoke with a leading neurologist about the mind diet and why it matters that in tonight's medical news.

Doctor Gregory Cooper.

Tell us, what exactly is the mind diet and what does research show about the impacts it can have on the brain?

Sure.

So the mind diet was developed by a Doctor Morris, a researcher at Rush University, combining elements of the Mediterranean diet, which we've all heard of, and the Dash diet, which was developed to help lower blood pressure.

But this diet was designed specifically for the brain, for brain health and try to lower our risk of neurodegeneration.

It lists a series of ten categories of foods, like leafy green vegetables, other vegetables, legumes that are good and gives us ideas on how much we should eat.

It also lists five foods that we should limit, and these are things like fried foods or fatty foods.

If we follow that diet, well, we can significantly lower our risk of dementia.

One study, one of the early studies showed if we followed it extremely well, we might lower risk by almost half if we followed it pretty well, which I think is what most of us are capable of.

We still might lower our risk by about a third.

Okay.

So for somebody, that just want to remember better and want to have better memory or, you know, just thinking and sharpen their thinking skills.

Does this provide any benefit?

It may not provide benefits specifically for that.

So this is this does improve our overall health.

And if our overall health is better we do know we think better.

So in that way it might help.

But really the the diet more than anything else is geared towards prevention to lower our risk from developing really serious problems down the road.

Okay.

Got it.

Name a couple of the foods in the mind diet that have perhaps the biggest impact on brain health.

Probably at the top would be leafy green vegetables.

Vegetables like kale or spinach.

Right behind that would be fruits.

And particularly berries.

Things like blueberries or strawberries seem to be very good.

So why those two?

What is what do those two foods do?

They are particularly high in certain, nutrients.

If we step back a little bit.

This diet is very focused on foods that have antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties, two things that are important for the brain.

And those types of foods have high levels of carotenoids or flavonoids that are particularly good at that.

Okay.

Do you have to be on this diet your entire life, or is it ever too late to start?

It's not too late to start now.

The longer you're on it, the more you adhere to it, the better.

But it is absolutely never too late to start.

Okay.

So, you know, so maybe somebody who is starting to show signs of dementia, it's not too late for them to see some benefits from this.

If it's early on, probably not.

It probably is a good thing to start.

Now, if someone has advanced dementia to be fair, this probably isn't going to make a big difference.

But there is more and more research that would show if we have a very early condition, like it's called mild cognitive impairment.

Changes in diet, along with, other lifestyle strategies like exercise, may really help to, at least slow, if not even partially reverse some of that memory loss.

Reverse some of the memory loss.

There are some studies of now not just diet alone, but looking at multimodal lifestyle strategies.

So looking at now, looking at your general health, looking at exercise, looking at diet, looking at sleep, a number of things.

If we do all of those things, well, there is some evidence that some people may do a little bit better.

Now those strategies, again are mainly aimed at trying to help, preserve cognitive function.

But some of the early results are promising.

Okay.

Just a few seconds left.

What is one thing that you could tell viewers watching at home to do to get a little closer to that mind diet, if they're not able to jump all in.

Focus on fruits.

Focus on vegetables.

Limit red meat.

Okay.

Got it.

Doctor Greg Cooper from the Norton Neuroscience Institute.

Thank you so much for being here.

Thank you.