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Dear Colleagues and Friends,
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The traditional lifestyles and healthy habits inherent to the Mediterranean basin have recently demonstrated surprising benefits for neurodegenerative diseases and other psychiatric disorders. Dementia is an age-related disorder which is not yet fully understood and currently has no effective treatment. In this context, diet modifications have been proposed as putative preventive strategies for various psychiatric diseases given their interplay in the biological mechanisms underlying these conditions. Promising reports have been drawn from a large prospective study including 16,160 participants from the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition (EPIC)-Spain Dementia Cohort. In this cohort, participants with high adherence to the Mediterranean diet had a 20% lower overall risk of dementia compared to those with low adherence. The association with non-Alzheimer’s dementia was found to be distinctly stronger for women, whereas men showed a stronger association with Alzheimer’s disease. Various mechanisms have been proposed for both psychiatric disorders and cardiovascular disease, in which the Mediterranean diet is known to have extensive benefits, including anti-inflammatory and antioxidant properties, lipid-lowering actions, and even benefits to the gut microbiome.
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More evidence points to the importance of metabolic health for healthy aging and prevention of neurodegenerative diseases. A key aspect to metabolic health includes adherence to antioxidant diets, such as the Mediterranean diet with an elevated consumption of olive oil containing polyphenols, Vitamin E and other bioactive compounds. Among older adults in the ENRICA-Study, growth differentiation factor 15 (GDF-15), a biomarker for aging and chronic disease, has been analyzed and inversely associated with the anti-inflammatory and antioxidant effects of certain healthy diets. In conclusion, these results suggest that improving diet quality has an inverse effect on systemic inflammation with potential benefits for healthy aging in older adults.
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Dietary habits are contemplated as one of the strongest modulators of gut microbiota. Furthermore, the importance of a healthy microbiome has been linked to overall health, particularly with a lower inflammatory profile. According to a recent review, the Mediterranean diet may improve inflammation and gut microbiota dysbiosis, due to its abundance in polyunsaturated fatty acids, dietary fiber, polyphenols and vitamins. Each of these foods and nutrients have been found to be essential for an adequate balance of Th17/Treg in the host and assuring high microbial diversity. In this regard, researchers in the Spanish Obekit cohort (normal weight, overweight, and obese participants) aimed to evaluate interactive associations between gut microbiota composition and habitual dietary intake in 360 adults. Results showed that the Mediterranean diet in general, but also fiber, legumes, vegetables, fruits, and nuts, are promoters of anti-inflammatory activity through certain bacterial strains characteristic of a healthy gut-microbiome.
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