Keystone
The risk of dying from dementia is increasing, according to a study. But there is one food in particular that could help prevent this possibility: olive oil.
Frequent consumption of olive oil reduces the risk of dying from dementia by 28%. This is the result of a large US study involving more than 92,000 participants for almost thirty years.
Anne-Julie Tessier from the Chan School of Public Health in Boston, Massachusetts, and his co-authors combined information from two decades-old epidemiological studies: the US Nurses’ Health Study and the Health Professionals Follow-Up Study. The findings were published in the US Medical Association’s Jama Network Open journal.
The subjects examined were both nurses and men working in the healthcare sector. Since they are particularly interested in these scientific studies due to their profession, the dropout rate among these groups of people is particularly low. This facilitates analysis.
Seven grams a day
In total, there were 92,283 participants, with an average age of 56.4 years and 65.6% women. The observation period was 28 years (from 1990 to 2018). Participants had no diagnosed cardiovascular disease or cancer at the start of the study.
Their eating habits were recorded at baseline and every four years thereafter. These include olive oil consumption (from zero to 4.5 grams per day, from 4.5 to seven grams and more than seven grams).
«Over the 28 years, there were 4,751 deaths associated with dementia. (…) Consumption of at least seven grams of olive oil per day was associated with a 28% lower risk of death from dementia compared to low olive oil consumption (…)”, they wrote the scientists in the summary of their study.
Also effective for those at risk
Some genetic conditions (the body’s production of apolipoprotein E4) have caused up to a nine-fold increase in the risk of dementia. But the apparently protective effect of olive oil was also evident in this group of people.
The experts wrote: “There was no interaction with other qualities of the diet.” If test subjects consumed an equivalent amount of olive oil instead of five grams of margarine or mayonnaise per day, the dementia mortality rate decreased by 8 to 14 percent.
SDA
