Duke neurologist Richard J. O’Brien, MD, PhD, Chief of the Memorty Disorders Clinic recommends the MIND Diet over the Keto Diet to improve cognitive function for several reasons:
- More studies have been done on the MIND diet
- The Keto diet is much more difficult to sustain
- The Keto diet is expensive to maintain
Two key studies show thet the MIND diet reduces the risk of of developing Alzheimer’s Disease by 53 percent and keeps the aging brain seven and a half years younger.
Then MIND diet combines the DASH diet (essentially a low salt diet) with the Mediterranean diet. A perfect MIND diet consists of the folloowing:
- At least one vegetable five times weekly
- Leafy green vegetables six times weekly
- Nuts five times weekly
- Berries twice weekly (In a 20-year study of over 16,000 older adults those who ate the most blueberries, raspberries, blackberries, and strawberries had the slowest rate of cognitive decline).
- Poultry twice weekly
- Fish once weekly
- Legumes twice weekly
- Whole grain breads
- Using olive oil as the main oil
- Sweets fewer than five times weekly
- Less than one tablespoon of butter daily
- Red meet fewer than four times weekly
- Fried foods less than once weekly
- No added salt