A 2 year multidomain intervention of diet, exercise, cognitive training, and vascular risk monitoring versus control to prevent cognitive decline in at-risk elderly people (FINGER): a randomised controlled trial
This study was published in the journal Lancet in 2015. The researchers randomly divided 1200 at-risk elderly people into 2 groups, with one getting advice on diet, exercise, cognitive training, and vascular risk monitoring and the other group receiving general health advice. The diet advice was based on the Finnish Nutrition Recommendations and included high consumption of fruits and vegetables, whole grains, low-fat milk and meat and eating fish at least twice a week. The participants attended group sessions and 3 individual sessions in which they were helped to tailor their diet to these recommendations. After two years, the group who received the diet advice and other treatment did significantly better on the comprehensive neuropsychological test battery, which measures cognitive ability.
Healthy Lifestyles Reduce the Incidence of Chronic Diseases and Dementia: Evidence from the Caerphilly Cohort Study
This study was conducted in Wales over 30 years. The researchers followed the health habits of over 1000 men. The food-related factors assessed were whether the participants ate three or more portions of fruit and/or vegetables a day, ate a diet that contained less than 30% of calories from fat; drank three or fewer servings of alcohol per day, and had a BMI between 18 and 25 kg/m2 (the range defined as healthy by the CDC). The researchers also recorded physical activity and smoking. They then rated the men on how many of the six health behaviors they followed and found that those who followed the healthy behaviors had about a 60% reduction in cognitive impairment and dementia.