The effect of MIND diet on improving memory in elderly: A narrative review

Abstract

As the world enters a super-aged society, senile diseases are rapidly increasing. Among them, patients with cognitive decline and decline and dementia are public health problems that are increasing rapidly every year. A healthy lifestyle is the biggest way to prevent dementia, because drugs or treatments are not yet developed to cure it. A healthy diet has great potential for maintaining cognitive health. Accordingly, a diet that can delay the onset of neurodegenerative diseases was developed, which is the Mediterranean-DASH Intervention for Neurodegenerative Delay (MIND) diet, a hybrid form of the Mediterranean diet and the Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension (DASH) diet. In this review paper, the effects of improving cognitive function, including the memory of the elderly on the MIND diet, are summarized. In most studies, the higher the MIND diet, the higher the cognitive function evaluation score, and the lower the incidence of dementia in the future. The reason is because of the anti-inflammatory and antioxidant effects of major nutritional components of the MIND diet: folate, carotenoid, polyphenol, and PUFA. Therefore, adherence to the MIND diet may be related to cognitive improvement in the elderly.