ABC News reports on its website that according to a study presented at the Radiological Society of North America’s annual meeting, “eating baked or broiled fish may help fight the brain shrinkage and cognitive decline associated with Alzheimer’s disease.” After tracking “fish consumption and measured brain volume and memory function in 260 cognitively normal adults over 10 years,” researchers found that “study participants who ate more fish had bigger brain areas — particularly the hippocampus, which is known to shrink in Alzheimer’s — and better memory than their fish-declining counterparts.”
HealthDay quotes study author Cyrus Raji, MD, PhD, of the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, Mercy Hospital, who explained that people who ate broiled or baked fish “had larger brain cells in areas of the brain responsible for memory and learning. And the reason that’s important is that these brain areas are at high risk for Alzheimer’s disease.”
What’s more, “in those people with larger brain volume, ‘the risk for Alzheimer’s and mild cognitive impairment went down by fivefold within five years following the brain scans we conducted,’ he said.”
“The researchers tried to take into account other risk factors for memory loss that could affect the results, including age, gender, education, obesity, and physical activity,” WebMD reports.
“Still, the association between fish, brain volume, and dementia remained. But, it is possible that other lifestyle factors, such as eating less meat, could have also contributed to the association between eating fish and brain health.”
MedPage Today points out, “Although a National Institutes of Health panel decided last year that nothing conclusively prevents Alzheimer’s disease, researchers continue to investigate whether a healthy diet, or specific components thereof, can have any beneficial effects.”