First, you should know that no really good study has been shown that any food or diet can prevent memory problems. That being said, there are some basic dietary principles that make sense.

One of the most basic principles of eating for brain fitness is to eat so that you can maintain a healthy weight. Studies have shown that excess fat can produce inflammatory substances that have been associated cognitive decline.

Sticking with a diet that helps you avoid excessive weight gain can also help you avoid developing something called the metabolic syndrome. That’s a combination of things that are associated with risk for diabetes and other diseases. One of the facets of metabolic syndrome is having high levels of blood sugar. Your brain needs sugar to work, but paradoxically if you have high levels of sugar in your body a lot of the time, you can have low levels of it in your brain.

Eating a diet that is high in fruits and vegetables, rich in whole grains, and low in saturated fats may help you keep your brain sharp. In particular, the Mediterranean diet has been related to lower risk for Alzheimer’s disease and slower decline in people who already have it.

If there are specific foods that are good for brain fitness, it’s not clear. Colorful berries, though, are high in substances called antioxidants and may help preserve your brain function. Other foods that may have an impact include leafy green vegetables (full of B vitamins that are key to maintaining your brain’s function) and other colorful foods.

Research doesn’t really support that idea that any one food is a magic bullet for keeping your brain functioning at its best, in spite of what you may read on the Web. The truth is probably a little more complicated.

Results of the overall study were negative – DHA at a dose of 2 grams a day didn’t slow how much patients’ cognitive abilities declined over 18 months.

One finding of the study has been largely ignored in media reports. In a planned subgroup analysis, though, patients treated with DHA and who did not have the ApoE 4 allele had slower cognitive decline. ApoE 4 is a gene that has been associated with greater risk for having Alzheimer’s disease. It may be related to how fatty substances in the body are used by the body.

Although the findings of the main trial are negative, one subgroup may have benefited from DHA treatment.

This study thus adds to a series of studies based on observations that people who take vitamins, nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, and fish oil supplements have lower risks for Alzheimer’s disease. The logic of the trials has been to evaluate things associated with lower risk as treatments, but none has turned out to be effective.

Click here to read the full article.

Reference:

Quinn JF et al (2010). Docosahexaenoic acid supplementation and cognitive decline in Alzheimer disease. JAMA, 304, 1903-1911.

They argue that prevention of Alzheimer’s disease hasn’t worked because, as they point out, Ronald Regan got Alzheimer’s even though he was both mentally and physically active. They also argue what we really need is a massive increase in research funding to find drug treatments for Alzheimer’s disease. Click here to see the opinion piece.

Is it possible to agree with someone’s conclusion but think that their reasoning is wrong? I think the answer for me has to be yes.

Their argument reflects a basic misconception about prevention. It’s as though we were saying because Jim Fixx (a famous runner) died of a heart attack we should give up on exercise and only focus on drug and surgical treatments for heart disease. It as thought we are saying, Let’s give up being healthy, because even people who exercise and eat right still get heart disease.

O’Connor and her colleagues argue that a major increase in funding for Alzheimer disease drug development might lead more rapidly to effective treatments, and cite the effort made in the 1980s to develop treatment for HIV infection. A similar effort, they argue, would lead to similar progress in Alzheimer’s.

We don’t know that, but there’s only one way to find out. Even though there have been important advances in understanding the basic pathology of Alzheimer’s, it’s still not clear how well treatments based on those advances will work. Recent drug trials have not panned out. A major advance could happen tomorrow, or not for many years.

An alternative model for understanding potential advances in treating Alzheimer’s might be efforts to treat cancer. While major advances in treatment have occurred since the time of the Nixon administration, reductions in cancer rates for things such as lung cancer are also heavily influenced by public health efforts to reduce smoking.

Maybe what we really need is a targeted effort to evaluate both preventive as well as drug treatment strategies in Alzheimer’s. The op-ed piece neglects promising developments such as Carl Cotman’s work on reducing amyloid load in animals that I wrote about several weeks ago. He showed that diet and exercise actually reduced amyloid (a substance believed to be central in Alzheimer’s disease) in aging dogs. That work can lead to preventive efforts but may also lead to drug therapies for cognitive decline and perhaps Alzheimer’s. (See my earlier post here.)

So give up on brain health? I think that’s a really bad idea. We know that people who are healthy as well as physically, socially, and mentally active are less likely to have cognitive decline. Will brain health prevent all Alzheimer’s? Probably not. But should we give up and throw all of our efforts into drug development? Until we have better treatments for cognitive decline, a brain healthy lifestyle is probably the best strategy for staying mentally sharp.

As a neuropsychiatrist, I often work with people who want to change something about themselves or their lives. And wanting to change raises the paradox we all face at times: we want to change, but we don’t.

The psychoanalysts used to have complex theories about why people do things that appear self-defeating. I think there’s a better answer: lack of focus. This may seem too simple, but attention is a complicated ability that is affected by things inside and outside of us.

When cognitive psychologists says that attention is a limited resource, they mean that you can only focus on a limited number of things at one time. Research has shown that even people who believe they are good at doing more than one thing at a time actually aren’t.

What does that have to do with change? In order to change, you have to be able to pay attention to what you’re doing and remember that you want to do something different. If you’re watching TV, it’s easy to eat an entire bag of chips. If you really pay attention to what you’re doing and at the same time remember that you want to lose 10 pounds, the chances are you will eat less. But when your attention is spent on the TV, your behavior becomes almost automatic (and probably outside of your awareness).

What can you do? Here are 5 ways to develop focus on what you want to change:

• Start every day with 10 minutes of focused thinking or meditation. Break up the morning rush for just a few minutes so that you’ll have the change to reflect on your goals for the day.
• Help yourself remember to pay attention. Recognize that you will forget or become distracted from your goals, and do something about it. In Aldous Huxley’s novel Island, birds were trained to help people to remember this point by repeatedly saying “Attention!” You may not have a mynah bird, but you can put a note on the bathroom mirror or a picture on the refrigerator to help you remember your goals.
• Schedule a reminder in your phone or computer. Set it to pop up at a particular time or interval to remind you to stop for a few moments and review your goals, to meditate, or to relax.
• Schedule time once a week for a more complete review of your goals at a time when you won’t feel rushed. Take some time to think about how well you’ve done during the preceding week, and focus on your goals for the coming week.
• Try writing down personal brain fitness goals and keep the list somewhere that you will see without making a specific effort, such a door you walk through every day.

If you want to achieve something – whether it’s weight loss, increased exercise, or consistent brain training – you have to deploy some of your limited resource, attention. Finding ways to keep your goals in mind, every day, is a key.

• Take two minutes to focus on something around you. Look at something near you – a chair, something on the wall, anything. Pay attention to it. Look at its color and shape. Attention may be a key in improving your memory, and improving attention skills may be a way to improve your brain fitness.
• Find a new way to the grocery store. More and more, my reading of the research on ways to maintain and improve cognitive functioning is that novelty is a key. It’s probably the element of experience that can stimulate new nerve cell growth. Research has shown that people with lives that include travel, learning new languages, and education are less likely to have cognitive problems as they get older. So find a new way to the grocery store or to your work. Explore your neighborhood, or take a look at the store next to the store you always visit. Give yourself a new experience.
• Park farther away from your job or at the store. Many people try to find the closest parking spot at work or at a store. Increase the amount of exercise you get today by parking farther, rather than closer.
• Identify one hassle today and deal with it. Odds are that the things that annoy or bother you are causing you stress. One of the worst things about stress is that over time we tend to forget it. We get used to it, and no longer pay attention to it. But the stress is still there, associated with increased levels of things such as cortisol and immune system factors. Your goal today: find one hassle and do something about it. If driving through one intersection makes you nervous, find a new route. If something your spouse, partner, or children do bugs you, say something about it. Some hassles can’t be eliminated. Figure out how to cope with the hassle by not reacting to it.
• Eat an extra serving of broccoli today. Experts say we all should eat 4-5 servings of fruit and vegetables a day, and research shows that the substances in fruits and vegetables can improve your brain fitness.

Brain fitness is probably not a one-time computer program. It’s a way of life. Try these 5 things for a week and then ask yourself how you feel.