Checking Out The Official MIND Diet Book
Checking Out The Official MIND Diet Book
Enter to win my giveaway of Dr. Martha Clare Morris’ new book
Hello, Brain Health Ambassadors! A new book landed in my post office box and I immediately thought of all of you. The Official MIND Diet: A Scientifically Based Program to Lose Weight and Prevent Alzheimer’s Disease by Dr. Martha Clare Morris with Laura Morris and Jennifer Ventrelle is a follow-up to Dr. Morris’ first book in 2015 Diet For the MIND. I am excited to be giving away 3 copies of this book to paying subscribers. If you’d like to enter to win a copy, follow the instructions at the end of this post.
Recap of the MIND DIet
If you’ve been following along with me here, you know the MIND diet was a cornerstone study in the link between dietary pattern and Alzheimer’s prevention. If you’re just hearing about the MIND diet, or you’d like a refresher, here is a brief synopsis.
MIND stands for Mediterranean-DASH Intervention for Neurodegenerative Decline. It’s a hybrid of the Mediterranean diet and the DASH (Dietary Approach to Stop Hypertension), two patterns shown to reduce cardiovascular disease risk.
The MIND diet study, published in Alzheimer’s and Dementia in 2015, followed over 900 cognitively healthy people (they did not have dementia at the beginning of the study) over 4.5 years.
Dr. Martha Clare Morris, the study’s lead researcher at Rush University, came up with the 10 brain healthy food groups and the 5 food groups to limit or avoid. (I go into these food groups in more detail here and here.) Study participants kept track of what they ate, were given a MIND diet score, and were followed closely with cognitive testing (such as memory tests).
At the end of the study, those who ate most closely to the MIND diet guidelines (more brain healthy foods, less of the others, with a score above 14 out of 15) were 53% less likely to be diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. Those who followed the MIND diet half the time (with a score of 6 to 8) also had significant risk reduction: about 37%.
The MIND diet study was the first nutritional intervention that showed significant Alzheimer’s risk reduction. Up until this time, Mediterranean diet studies were showing reductions closer to the 30% range.
The MIND diet has been replicated in other countries, found to have a significant impact on preventing Parkinson’s, breast cancer, and open angle glaucoma. Following the MIND diet has been shown to reduce the risk of all-cause mortality (the chance of dying for any reason) by 37% over 12 years. I went into these findings here: The MIND Diet Perks You May Be Missing.
Dr. Morris’ follow-up study, Trial of the MIND for the Prevention of Cognitive Decline in Older Persons was published in July 2023. This compared a group of 300 people following the MIND diet to 300 people following another healthy diet, both with reduced calories. The differences between the groups were not as astounding as in the original MIND diet study, but everyone’s cognitive health improved. And, meaningful gains in cognitive function in the MIND group emerged after 2 years. I went into the details of this study here: Takeaways From The MIND Diet Trial.
About Dr. Martha Clare Morris
I might be Martha Clare’s biggest fan. I stopped by her office at Rush University in Chicago (I had trained there as a medical student) when I heard about the MIND diet study. This was 2014. Back then, I was just starting to teach brain-healthy cooking and Martha Clare had already been studying the link between nutrition and brain health for 20 years. Somehow I enticed her to come to Jackson, Wyoming to be a guest speaker at our local hospital and do a cooking class with me. This finally came to pass in 2019.
That June of 2019, Martha Clare was probably the most knowledgeable person in the world about nutrition and Alzheimer’s prevention. Spending time with her was a real pleasure and I picked her brain with dozens of questions. The MIND diet trial was already well underway and she invited me to help teach the study participants brain healthy cooking techniques.
Sadly, Martha Clare was diagnosed with a rare gastrointestinal cancer and passed away early in 2020.