New study reveals which diets will help avoid illness in later life
Research has revealed that a healthy diet - such as the Mediterranean diet which is high in plants, fish and unsaturated fats - could slow down the accumulation of chronic diseases including dementia in older adults. Inflammatory diets full of processed meat and sugar may accelerate it.
Researchers from Karolinska Institutet in Sweden studied four diets to investigate their impact on chronic diseases in older adults.
Three of the diets studied were healthy and focused on the intake of vegetables, fruit, whole grains, nuts, legumes, unsaturated fats and reduced intake of sweets, red meat, processed meat and butter/margarine.
The fourth diet, however, was pro-inflammatory and focused on red and processed meat, refined grains and sweetened beverages, with lower intake of vegetables, tea and coffee.
Researchers followed the diets of 2,400 adults aged 60 and older in Sweden for 15 years and tracked their chronic conditions.
Dietary intake was measured using food frequency questionnaires, and adherence to four dietary patterns: the Empirical Dietary Inflammatory Index (EDII), AHEI, the Alternate Mediterranean Diet (AMED), and the MIND (Mediterranean–DASH Intervention for Neurodegenerative Delay).
Multimorbidity was defined as the number of chronic diseases and grouped by organ system - musculoskeletal, cardiovascular, and neuropsychiatric.
The results published in the journal Nature Aging revealed those who followed the healthy diets had a slower development of chronic diseases.
For example, long-term adherence to healthy dietary patterns, particularly the AMED, AHEI, and MIND, was linked to a slower accumulation of chronic diseases in older adults.
This applied to cardiovascular disease and dementia, but not to diseases related to muscles and bones.
But those who followed the pro-inflammatory diet, on the other hand, increased their risk of chronic diseases.
'Our results show how important diet is in influencing the development of multimorbidity in ageing populations,' said co-first author Adrián Carballo-Casla, postdoctoral researcher at the Aging Research Centre, Department of Neurobiology, Care Sciences and Society, Karolinska Institutet.
The protective effects of diet may be explained by reduced inflammation, a key factor in aging-related diseases.
Study authors want to further their research by identify the dietary recommendations that may have the greatest impact on longevity and the groups of older adults who may benefit most from them, based on their age, gender, psychosocial background and chronic diseases.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
Director Francis Ford Coppola doing 'fine' after cardiac procedure in Rome
By Steve Gorman LOS ANGELES (Reuters) -Francis Ford Coppola, the acclaimed American director of "The Godfather" movies and "Apocalypse Now," underwent a non-emergency cardiac procedure in a Rome hospital and is doing fine, he and a U.S.-based representative said on Tuesday. "Mr. Coppola went in for a scheduled update procedure" performed by renowned Italian-born cardiologist Dr. Andrea Natale "and is resting nicely," the representative said in response to Italian media reports that the director was hospitalised. "All is well." Coppola, 86, has been a patient of Natale for more than 30 years, the representative said. The filmmaker was admitted on Tuesday to the Policlinico Tor Vergata, a public hospital in the Italian capital, news agency ANSA reported. The U.S.-based representative declined to give any details about the nature of Coppola's medical procedure, but said: "There was not an emergency. He went to the hospital in a car. He had a scheduled appointment." Coppola posted a photograph of himself on Instagram appearing relaxed and smiling with a message reassuring fans, "I am well." "Da Dada (what my kids call me) is fine, taking an opportunity while in Rome to do the update of my 30-year-old afib procedure with its inventor, a great Italian doctor - Dr. Andrea Natale," it said. He did not elaborate further. The term "a-fib" in medical parlance is short for atrial fibrillation, a type of abnormal heart rhythm. Natale, currently the executive director of the Texas Cardiac Arrhythmia Institute, is an electrophysiology specialist who pioneered several treatments and devices for the treatment of such disorders. Coppola was in Italy to promote his latest movie, the science-fiction epic "Megalopolis," a $120 million self-funded production about a visionary architect's quest to transform a futuristic version of New York City called New Rome into a utopian community. The film, which has drawn mixed reviews and struggled at the box office following its 2024 debut at the Cannes Film Festival, was reported to have received a special screening at the Magna Graecia Film Festival in Catanzaro, Italy. The Italian-American director has won five Academy Awards, four of them for his work on the first two films in "The Godfather" trilogy, widely considered by cinema buffs to rank among the greatest movies of all time. Solve the daily Crossword
Yahoo
2 hours ago
- Yahoo
Expert Says Collapse of Human Civilization Looks Like the Most Likely Scenario
New research is warning that the most likely outcome is that human civilization is poised for collapse. As The Guardian reports, a sweeping new historical survey that analyzes 5,000 years and the collapse of more than 400 societies makes the case that we're in for a rude awakening. "We can't put a date on Doomsday, but by looking at the 5,000 years of [civilisation], we can understand the trajectories we face today — and self-termination is most likely," Luke Kemp, research fellow at the Center for the Study of Existential Risk at the University of Cambridge, told the British newspaper. "I'm pessimistic about the future," he added. "But I'm optimistic about people." Kemp warned of narcissistic and psychopathic leaders — a powerful but small "oligarchy" working against the interests of the rest of us — who turn a blind eye to existential threats like global warming, nuclear weapons, and AI. Scientists have long warned that escalating global temperatures caused by human activities could eventually tip us over the edge, leading to food shortages, unbearable heat, and droughts — not to mention the strain and instability that all those problems place on everything else. To Kemp, we can learn from thousands of years of human civilization to get a sense of how things will eventually play out. In his book, he used the term "Goliaths" to refer to kingdoms and empires that dominated others using weaponry and other threatening tactics. "History is best told as a story of organised crime," he told the Guardian. "It is one group creating a monopoly on resources through the use of violence over a certain territory and population." But these groups don't tend to last and eventually collapse under their own weight due to inequality, the researcher argued, and greed by those in power. "Then as elites extract more wealth from the people and the land, they make societies more fragile, leading to infighting, corruption, immiserization of the masses, less healthy people, overexpansion, environmental degradation, and poor decision making by a small oligarchy," he said. "The hollowed-out shell of a society is eventually cracked asunder by shocks such as disease, war or climate change." So how does this all pertain to the 21st century specifically? Kemp argued that we're suffering under "one single, interconnected global Goliath," acting within capitalism. Collapses in food systems, the constant threat of nuclear war, and a growing climate crisis could eventually lead to the current Goliath's demise. And Kemt didn't hold back when singling out the leaders responsible for bringing us closer to the end. "The three most powerful men in the world are a walking version of the dark triad: Trump is a textbook narcissist, Putin is a cold psychopath, and Xi Jinping came to rule [China] by being a master Machiavellian manipulator," he told the Guardian. To avoid a total collapse, we need to "create genuine democratic societies to level all the forms of power" and tax the wealthy — which isn't actually as out-of-reach as it sounds, according to Kemt. "Today, people find it easier to imagine that we can build intelligence on silicon than we can do democracy at scale, or that we can escape arms races," he said. "It's complete bullsh*t. Of course we can do democracy at scale. We're a naturally social, altruistic, democratic species, and we all have an anti-dominance intuition." "This is what we're built for," he added. More on societal collapse: 15,000 Scientists Warn Society Could Collapse By 2100 Due to Climate Change Solve the daily Crossword
Yahoo
3 hours ago
- Yahoo
The new talking therapy that can help reduce back pain for up to three years
Talking therapies can reduce pain and disability among people with lower back pain, a new study suggests. Academics found the benefits can be seen for up to three years after treatment. Psychotherapists use various talking therapies to help people to overcome stress, emotional and relationship problems or troublesome habits. For some, lower back pain will be a single incident which recovers on its own but most people with the condition will suffer long-term problems with unpredictable flare-ups. Most treatments for the condition have 'small to moderate' effects that do not last for a long period of time, experts said. The new study, published in the journal Lancet Rheumatology, focused on a type of psychotherapy called cognitive functional therapy (CFT) – a type of psychotherapy to 'address the causal mechanisms' of chronic lower back pain and help to change the way people think about and respond to pain. An international team of researchers, led by experts in Australia, wanted to examine whether CFT brought long-term benefits for patients with lower back pain. More than 1,000 patients from Australia with lower back pain were recruited to the study. A third were given 'usual care', a third were given CFT and the final third were given CFT plus another technique known as biofeedback, which tries to teach a person to control automatic body functions. People who received 'usual care' were given what their GP surgery recommended or what they chose. Some 300 people with an average age of 48 continued the study to the three-year follow-up point, split between each of the three groups. Researchers found that CFT, and CFT and biofeedback, were both more effective than usual care in reducing activity limitation caused by lower back pain. And they also were more effective for reducing pain intensity at three years. There were no significant differences among patients who did and did not use biofeedback techniques, prompting researchers to say the use of biofeedback 'did not add to effectiveness'. 'Treatment sessions of CFT produced sustained effects at three years for people with chronic disabling low back pain,' the researchers wrote. 'These long-term effects are novel and provide the opportunity to markedly reduce the effect of chronic back pain if the intervention can be widely implemented.' They added: 'CFT is the first treatment for chronic disabling low back pain with good evidence of large, long-term effects on disability. 'It offers a high-value, low-risk intervention with long-term benefits for patients with persistent, disabling low back pain.'
