Risk of dementia linked to diet low in fruits, vegetables, beans, tea: study | Hacker News Reader

Risk of dementia linked to diet low in fruits, vegetables, beans, tea: study

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77 pointsrustoo93 comments

Eat whole plant based foods. At first it's difficult, but taste for it develops and so do one's cooking abilities. Healthy eating is like playing a video game on high difficulty settings - arduous and steep learning curve, but rewarding if health is your passion.

I would suggest removing plant-based foods to whatever degree possible. Eliminate wheat, soy, nightshades, and other likely irritants/allergens.

My social group tends more towards heterodox dietary choices than most groups, so I have a lot of friends on “extremist” diets. It is quite apparent that the expected outcome of people who only eat meat is significantly better than the people who never eat meat. Both are likely better off than most people consuming the standard American diet, but this might just be due to increased focus on health in general rather than any specific benefit of the diet.

Both you and op make such convincing arguments, I have no idea what to do.

Neither poster makes convincing arguments; you can find anecdotal reports of nearly any diet producing seemingly miraculous results, but any consideration of one's eating patterns should be based off peer-reviewed research.

Even the peer-reviewed research is mostly junk observational studies that are distorted by the healthy subject effect and other uncontrolled variables. That is not a sound basis for making personal dietary decisions.

A better approach for most people is to conduct personal n=1 experiments and just see empirically what works best for you in terms of subjective feelings and objective performance metrics.

This is unfortunately the status quo of nutrition research; A long-term RCT is the "gold standard", but it is exceedingly difficult to recruit subjects and ensure their compliance over meaningful periods of time. Which is part of why constant flip-flopping about whether something is healthy or not is almost a trope in journalism. Nonetheless, a few principles have been well established: vegetables are good, fruit is (mostly) good, refined grains and free sugars are bad.

The issue with personal experiments is often that they are just as biased and cannot be conducted over meaningful time-scales. As an anecdote to illustrate this, I am significantly more productive and energetic when consuming a single sugary, chocolately coffee, but it would be foolish to conclude over such a short period of time that my personally ideal diet should include sugary coffee. I'm not deluded that this is a healthy practice, however; free sugars, fructose in particular, are demonstrably a major factor in the pathogenesis of lifestyle-related diseases.

> vegetables are good, fruit is (mostly) good, refined grains and free sugars are bad

Even those are not really absolutes, because a diet with only those "good" elements will still be worse than a mix including animal proteins. Also, some vegetables are simply bad in excessive quantities (mushrooms, potatoes, etc).

The problem we typically have is just over-abundance of everything in our diets. Too much meat is bad, too much vegetables are bad, too much fruit is bad, too much fish is bad, too much dairy is bad. And that's because our bodies evolved to make the most of anything they could digest, since the normal state was scarcity and every little bit helped with survival. Now these finely-tuned "recycling systems" are routinely oversupplied in ways they were not meant to be, and they can't help themselves but overproduce nutrients of all sorts, with all sorts of unpredictable results.

We are like ports where ships continue to unload containers at excessive rates. Some of those containers will end up polluting the area, some will just accumulate into horrible mountains, the motorways will be clogged by a continuous stream of lorries, etc etc etc. Some of those boxes will contain life-saving medicines and some will contain pointless junk, but that's not the actual problem - if you reduce the rate of shipping, then all containers will happily go where they have to go and be dealt with as they "deserve".

We were probably not built to have three meals every day.

Yes it should. And there is a lot of it linking a range of chronic disorders with nutrition. However not everyone has the time and perhaps the background to sift through and see what is significant. On the numerous diets on offer, my impression is that only the Mediterrean Diet has received solid backing from evidence-based peer-reviewed studies.

Part of the issue is that the so-called "Standard American Diet" is so bad in the first place that any deviation from it can produce encouraging results.

I tend to agree, however, that a Mediterrean-patterned diet is definitely in the right direction based upon the weight of nutrition literature.

I agree, but find it hard to balance a medium-to-high amount of seafood in the diet with the prevalence of dangerous levels of heavy metals found in fish

In general smaller fish that are harvested at younger ages have lower heavy metal levels. They haven't had as much time to accumulate toxins. Sardines are usually a good option.

Obviously sarcasm Obviously

Sincerely try it and see how it makes you feel, then decide. Make an effort for 3-4 weeks, making sure to get enough calories (https://cronometer.com/ is a good resource) and have support from your friends and family. I think only first-hand experience could really convince anyone.

It really takes weeks and months for the body to fully adjust to a diet. Also the body can suddenly change and one needs another kind of diet.

We want to measure something - not feelings. What can be measured?

You can measure athletic performance. Check your 1RM for the standard lifts, or VO2 Max for running, or whatever performance metric aligns best to your favorite sport.

A normal blood panel is a good place to start. For me, lipids and liver function tests are what I track. But insulin sensitivity is a good one too. All depends on your personal risk factors

Just be aware that nutritional deficiencies can take months or in some cases years to manifest. Just because you feel better in the short term does not mean it’s a long term solution.

There’s a couple of personal experiences where I switched to a vegan diet and felt great for the first two months or so but other health/performance factors in the longer-term caused me to deviate away from it.

+1 for Cronometer. I evaluated a bunch of nutrition tracking apps mostly on simple/focused UX and this was the winner.

Everything in moderation (except for moderation)

s/except/including/

Would you hammer your toe in moderation?

There really some things where the less you have, you the better.

Thanks for pointing that out, else I'd have been completely lost.

One should not come to an IT forum for advice on health, so this is probably a good outcome

Science is overwhelming on the side of whole-food, plant-based diets as the better choice for long-term health. This is covered in books like "How Not to Die" and "Own Your Health".

The study linked here agrees-- more fruits and vegetables is correlated with lower dementia.

>the expected outcome of people who only eat meat is significantly better than the people who never eat meat

Hannibal Lecter definitely outperforms expectations.

At least for allergens, the latest advice is that babies should be exposed to them because early exposure helps prevent food allergies.

Your experience might simply reflect that anyone on a careful diet is likely to be healthier than average simply by avoiding all the junk people typically eat.

> I would suggest removing plant-based foods to whatever degree possible. Eliminate wheat, soy, nightshades, and other likely irritants/allergens.

What is the basis for this assertion? I mean besides self-congratulating anecdotes and other second-hand knowledge.

What's the basis for your earlier assertion?

For one, the very article we're discussing.

What's the basis for your assertion that plant based is somehow healthier? It's absolutely not and you'll be lacking in a variety of vital nutrients. A balanced, varied diet is best.

>It's absolutely not

Rarely can conversations like these be improved by absolute claims.

There’s research going back decades showing reduction in saturated fat (generally from animal products) improves cardiovascular health. CV risks are one of the largest mortality links in industrial societies.

Any lack of vitamin intake can be supplimented with otc vitamins. It is better to acquire them through food, but the often recited B-vitamin deficiency in vegans is easily quashed with a B-complex a few times a week max.

If your “healthy” diet requires vitamin pills it’s not a healthy diet. Animal diets don’t require you to take pills or do anything weird - the absolute most extreme advice some animal diet people will tell you is that it’s a good idea to eat liver.

I don't personally adhere to a strictly vegan diet. But if one does, and their avoidance of stress hormone metabolites in industrially raised livestock makes them feel better, then taking a vitamin supplement (which is orders of magnitude under the maximum safe dose and therefore without side effects) is the rational choice.

The cited B12 vitamin turns out to come from bacteria, not plants or animals. Humans used to get it by eating plants because they weren't washed well. We only get it from non-human animals because they eat things which have the bacteria on them. B12 was already recently found in "water lentils" but I don't think that's commercially available yet.

As far as "doing anything weird", have you looked in how farmers forcibly impregnate cows or what happens baby chicks or dairy calves that have the misfortune to be born male?

That's a good point, even something like the carnivore diet is apparently quite low in inflammation.

>Eliminate wheat, soy, nightshades, and other likely irritants/allergens.

I’m curious how you arrived at this conclusion. Granting that allergic or inflammatory responses may be on a spectrum, a cursory look online seemed to indicate many animal products have higher rates of allergic responses than plant products. E.g., soy is listed at 0.4% of the population while (cow) milk is 2-3%.

Maybe a better way to phrase it is to remove any food that causes an inflammatory response.

Edit: clarifying the type of animal milk

No one except people who have been affected by weird pathogens like lone star tick disease is allergic to ruminant meat. Milk is probably the single worst case example of an animal product, by a huge margin, because while almost everyone ate a ton of ruminant meat, not everyone ate a ton of milk.

Fair point. But by that same logic we need rob throw out your examples as well since they are the most prevalent plant allergens. Even then, they are generally affecting less than 1% of the population.

Switching a population to a ruminant-based diet is currently a privilege that is not generalizable under the current food system. (Which is why I specifically chose cow milk as the comparison as a calorie/protein source).

I think your observations about expected outcome are true. Unfortunately, it's inconvenient in light of climate change because it presents a seemingly intractable problem:

- humans should eat (minimally processed) animal products - production of animal products must be minimized to fight catastrophic climate change

From where I sit, it seems like more and more educated, well-meaning people are starting to lean into a plant-based craze on poorly founded information that seems well founded because the educated classes generally agree it is correct.

Is there any study that shows that nightshades increase inflammation. There are tons of studies showing that tomatoes lowers inflammation. Here is an example.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5766234/

I think he's referring to the fact that some people react to nightshades. It can cause weird inflammation-like responses for those that are susceptible.

I think this is the error in the OP’s claim. A relatively rare case (allergic reaction in <1% of the population) is generalized as being applicable to the population at large.

Not really, they were giving multiple examples to point out that plant-based food can and do cause inflammation.

I think you’re misunderstanding. While true, their point is only applicable to a vanishingly small amount of the population. For example, soy allergies are only listed as a 0.4% rate of prevalence. I don’t think that’s enough for an absolutist claim that applies to the other 99.6% of humans. It comes across as cherry picking, bad faith, or just not understanding the data.

If I cherry pick the first Google scholar link that is showing a 2.3% seafood allergy, would you conclude that all people should abstain from fish?

It’s not a question of whether a particular food (let alone an entire group like plants) can cause inflammation, but whether it’s prevalent enough problem to claim people should completely cut it from their diet. You alluded too this with the caveat “in those who are susceptible”. We shouldn’t generalize a rule for those who are susceptible to be applicable to those who are not.

Last year during COVID I ended up doing a 26.2 mile run as something do in the spring. I was surprised at how quickly I recovered so I ended up doing another the next weekend... the pattern continued for 5 weeks.

I eat a primarily whole-food, plant-based diet and credit the low inflammation of the diet with ability to recover quickly and do that at age 45.

I thought it might be a one-off, but in the fall I ended up doing 6 26.2+ mile runs in 6 weeks, including a 50k race and setting my marathon PR on the last run.

But now I'm seeing my 10 year old get into running who has been plant-based from birth. He beat almost 80% of the field in a half marathon about three weeks ago, then two week later completed a 19 mile (30k) run. He's also clearly recovering rapidly and has relatively low soreness.

Research indicates that time to recover from endurance sports activities has a lot more to do with genetics than diet.

Congratulations on the marathon PR.

Source?

I thought I was finally doing good settled on eating mostly chicken breast and whole milk with a multivitamin and omega 3, now I'm apparently at risk for dementia unless I cram plants in. It just never ends.

Are you serious? What would ever lead you to think that such a limited diet could be healthy? Humans evolved to eat everything.

It's very hard to get enough protein for muscle building eating anything else without going over my calorie goals, so I settled into a routine of chicken breasts and coffee with milk for the most part. Chicken breast is allegedly very healthy overall, and whole milk has necessary fat and vitamins. I do still eat other things a few times a week.

Yikes. That's just so far off base I don't even know where to begin correcting the misconceptions.

Nothing I said is wrong. White chicken meat is considered a good food and you need some dietary fat, and it really is hard to get 170g of protein under 1800 calories without a lot of it being chicken. I've tried protein shakes but they got old.

What does "good food" even mean? Considered by who? Are you even familiar with protein quality metrics?

Your comments are not even wrong. They're just completely off base and reflect a fundamental misunderstanding.

Guess all those world class bodybuilders eating chicken are killing themselves with low quality protein.

How exactly is dietary inflammation effect measured? Most claims about diet are based on broad epidemiological studies, and questionably accurate self reporting. I'm all for eating more healthfully, but please show me the rigor behind any one approach, and how I can self measure.

This paper (J.Nutr.139:2365–2372,2009) 'A New Dietary Inflammatory Index Predicts Interval Changes in Serum High-Sensitivity C-Reactive Protein' explains what this is about & lists foods and constituents included in the inflammatory index DII. They used a literature search to link six inflammatory markers (cytokines)with foods associated with their increase or decrease and there is evidence of a regulatory function.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2777480/

From the research linked in the article:

“The inflammatory potential of diet was assessed through a DII score which considers literature-derived associations of 45 food parameters with levels of pro- and anti-inflammatory cytokines in the blood; higher values indicated a more pro-inflammatory diet.”

This doesn’t negate the potential problems of self-reported diet, though.

As some who, along with my partner, needs to be on an anti-inflammatory diet to help with a condition, here are some foods that I seek out and some that I avoid, along with a few alternatives in parentheses for the ones I avoid. These are non-exhaustive lists.

Recommend: Nuts and legumes, particularly those with high Omega-3 fatty acid content; eggs (it is safe to have up to 3 a day long-term, there are recent studies on this); onions, peppers, garlic; non-exotic spices are important including paprika, sage, turmeric, ginger, black pepper; chia, cassava, or almond flour tortillas (instead of corn or wheat); dairy products (cheese seems to be fine for us, as for milk we use oat or almond milk)

Avoid: Gluten containing grains including wheat (replace with brown rice, buckwheat quinoa, legume-based pastas); ultra-processed foods (have packaged organic foods without presevatives); high amounts of sugar; corn due to its high omega-6 content; red meats such as beef and pork also due to omega-6 (fatty fish, chicken, other seafood, vegan proteins like beans, tofu, mushrooms)

I should add, please do you own research. Certain foods are generally better for the average person, as I find through knowing other people with immune disorders, but others can have mixed results for a subset of the population. What I do strongly stand by is the list of some of the foods I avoid.

Honestly, if you can cut (processed) sugar completely it's a huge win. I still get my sugar rush from (dried) fruits like mango but the body needs that anyway.

> After adjusting for age, sex and education

Wait, we're not adjusting for wealth, environmental exposure, exercise, fitness, or existing health conditions?

If the samples are TRULY random and not within a specific culture/society I doubt we need that. But whether it is is another question.

Even if the sample is truly random, this is not a controlled study and there are correlated behaviour.

This is a self-report survey about historical diet. It's basically meaningless regardless. People that think they're healthy will report that they ate a lot of foods they currently think are healthy, not what they actually ate. This is true even if people are asked days later, much less years.

Environmental exposure is major factor, especially with heavy metals in the diet. Heavy metals can drive inflammatory responses and metals like lead are associated with cognitive decline. Lead exposure historically was associated with high-traffic locations (typically poorer people live closer to high-traffic zones, which also leads to asthma).

This could lead to all kinds of confounding factors, i.e. people with different lead exposure history could respond differently to 'anti-inflammatory diets'. Then there's liver damage; the liver processes many toxins and unprocessed toxins could cause neural damage and dementia, there's literature on that as well.

I've been doing long hackathons as of lately and i wanted to be in peak condition. Now i always knew which foods affected my mental clarity but i never took it seriously - until now.

So for the past 3 months i cut on these foods:

- Processed sugars - Carbs (not completely) - red meat (not completely)

Meals: - Morning: Coffee (espresso) / sometimes i'll eat some almonds or dry fruits. - Lunch: It varies between salmon/tuna avocado/sweet potato/brocolli and other vegetables - Afternoon/Night: Light snacks like yogurt + honey

+ Exercise (But i've always exercised regularly)

Results:

Great mental clarity throughout the day. I used to be completely out of energy after 5pm, both mentally and physically. Now evening feel pretty close to what morning feel like in terms of focus, which is amazing for me.

do you feel if morning coffee just returns you to the baseline, instead of giving an edge?

Coffee it's something i have experimented with in the long run.

I went a few months without any coffee and the effects where very positive. Less social anxiety, less irritably and more stable mental energy throughout the day. I could also retain focus for longer periods.

On the other side of the coin i noticed that i became more... boring. To sum it up i became less interested to learn and try new stuff (side projects, trying new technologies etc..).

I ended up settling for a lower amount of coffee. 1 1/2 shot of espresso in the morning and that's it. Still puts me in creative mood but no jitters or crash afterwards.

I've been following the "MIND diet" quite diligently for several years now. I wish I could say it gave me superpowers, but it _has_ turned me into a better cook as I've strived to find new takes on salad and vegetable dishes. I'm always surprised more people have haven't heard of it, though most of it is fairly intuitive.

[1] https://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/nutrition-and-h...

Some important points from the article:

> "The study was an observational one, not a clinical trial. It does not prove that eating an anti-inflammatory diet prevents brain aging and dementia, it only shows an association. An additional limitation is the short follow-up time of three years. Longer studies are needed to confirm and replicate these findings."

So it's more an indication than anything else. The actual concept proposed in the paper is:

> "Aging is characterized by a functional shift of the immune system towards a proinflammatory phenotype. This derangement has been associated with cognitive decline and has been implicated in the pathogenesis of dementia. Diet can modulate systemic inflammation; thus, it may be a valuable tool to counteract the associated risks for cognitive impairment and dementia."

So, they seem to be saying inflammation - an immune system response - becomes deranged during aging - so diets that reduce inflammatory responses or their effects might be helpful in countering dementia, as nerve cells are susceptible to inflammatory damage. Sounds plausible, but needs testing.

This is based on survey responses from a 1000 people, based on DII which is apparently misused and not well understood. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6416047/

My observation, people like to eat and generally don’t like to excercise. If a million well researched and documented studies say that better health is the direct result of regular exercise, and 1 study by a quack says to stop eating these 5 things to improve health, the 1 study will be shared a billion times on Facebook.

Meanwhile I get glared at because I look at them and say, I don’t think cheddar cheese is your problem. The reason you are gaining weight, can’t sleep, and have health problems is because you live a sedentary life.

The description of what constitutes a “low inflammation” diet in publications like these often strikes me as very questionable a priori. On what basis would I expect beans, a food that is nothing remotely like what would have been consumed in my evolutionary environment, to be “anti-inflammatory”? Especially given that beans are understood to cause excess gas production, which does not suggest efficient/clean digestion. I would need pretty strong evidence (stronger than is typical for nutrition/dietary “science” papers) to accept this characterization at face value.

The research was about the effect of your diet on dementia. When looking from an evolutionary perspective, I don't think that the chance of developing dementia was very important. Most people never reached that age and when they did, they probably couldn't reproduce anymore anyway.

So I don't think your argument about beans can be used to invalidate the findings of the research.

This is an off-the-cuff response so maybe I'm completely wrong, but I recently started baking sourdough at home with my own starter.

The starter is simply flour and water, but after a while of refreshing with new flour and water eventually the ever-present wild yeast and (good) bacteria start to grow really quickly.

I usually wrap with saran wrap and when the starter is really active the saran wrap expands a bunch. From what I understand this is the gas from the bacteria eating their way through the flour.

Could excess gas in humans be a similar situation? ie lots of gas means our microbiome is busy eating and farting a bunch. Which to me sounds like a good thing. Maybe not so good for those around you.

> a food that is nothing remotely like what would have been consumed in my evolutionary environment

What does that have to do with anything?

One would think the only thing to check for when designing an anti-inflammatory diet is inflammation.

> What does that have to do with anything?

Because it influences the likelihood that I’m genetically adapted to metabolize a food. People without milk in their evolutionary environment tend to be lactose intolerant, for example.

It's arguably impossible to eat what we would have eaten as cavemen given how essentially every food has been subject to thousands of years of domestication and cultivation, rendering it relatively distinct from its distant wild ancestor.

The gas beans give you is likely due to an inappropriately low amount of gut bacteria required for their digestion. It would be a better idea to try to re-cultivate this bacteria than to exclude beans, however.

Now I don't know what is anti inflammatory or not, but it's possible that beans could be reduce inflammation due to the starches that feed beneficial bacteria. The bacteria in our bodies plays a vital role in signaling the body, some bacteria increase inflammation while others reduce it.

I often wonder if environmental pollutants like mircoplastics or some unknown chemical in our environment has lead to the reduction in diversity of gut bacteria making autoimmune disorders skyrocket.

There's a lot of evidence to suggest that people who eat more legumes live longer: https://www.ag.ndsu.edu/food/pulse-crops/research/legumes-ar...

A number of wild legume species have edible parts. It's probably safe to say that some had been foraged by hominids prior to agriculture. Cultivation often improved the way foods affect the body by reducing anti-nutrients and toxins in a plant.

> The study was an observational one, not a clinical trial. It does not prove that eating an anti-inflammatory diet prevents brain aging and dementia, it only shows an association.

I guess there has to be a lot more clinical trials to really tick some boxes on which factors and which foods are proven key to neurological disorders. Nightshades (ie. tomatoes) have been popularly linked to inflammatory syndrome due to their alkaloid content, but also have been listed as a natural anti-inflammatory due to the high content of lycopene.

Is there an agreement among anti-aging research if consuming meat affects lifespan? Keto is very popular now, and it allows plenty of meat

The blue zones literature has a bit to say about this.

> Keto is very popular now, and it allows plenty of meat

This is a popular assumption about keto, but it’s a bit of a misnomer. Keto allows plenty of fat, but sticking to your macros actually only allows for a moderate amount of meat, especially leaner meats because of the excessive protein/fat ratio. Excessive protein can be converted to glucose. If your intention is ketosis, excess protein consumption will inhibit ketosis to almost the same degree as carb consumption.

So yes there is meat, but when you are focused on eating the fattier cuts, the tendency is to eat less amounts of it. Your satiety response hits way faster with those type of cuts. Think about it in terms of a half a pound of bacon vs. an 8oz filet mignon. Many folks could eat a filet that size, but couldn’t manage to get through that much bacon. Your body basically says “enough”.

I am 5 years keto, and I eat far less meat now than before I was keto.

Serious question about inflammation.

If studies like this are claiming this is due to inflammation, and these diets are anti-inflammatory, how does this compare to taking NSAIDs daily such as aspirin, ibuprofen, etc?

Clearly eating fruits is better than taking Advil every day, but if the issue is inflammation, I would think the Advil would have a more significant clinical effect then eating berries.

You can see the effects off too many NSAIDs here: https://www.webmd.com/arthritis/features/pain-relief-how-nsa...

Uclers and other problems in esophagus, stomach and small intestine, reduced blood flow, permanent kidney damage, extreme allergic reactions for some.

> Uclers and other problems in esophagus, stomach and small intestine, reduced blood flow, permanent kidney damage, extreme allergic reactions for some.

I have taken NSAIDs fairly frequently all my life with zero issues (so far, yes, I understand).

The question I have is, given zero side effects, was this at all beneficial in the same way eating fruits are? Outside of the obvious "yes it was beneficial for pain relief".

Pretend there are no side effects for the sake of this discussion. I'm curious about whole-body inflammation.

Alternatively:

Risk of diet low in fruits, vegetable, beans and tea linked to dementia.

So how would chocolate and coffee rank.

Chocolate is not beneficial in any way, shape, or form. It's a lie perpetuated by the food industry.

I would bet a lot that exercise is your best bet for cognitivve health.

You can exercise a lot AND eat well.

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