The real brain food could be fresh veggies and olive oil, study finds
Jan. 5, 2017 at 5:24 AMMaggie FoxErika Edwards
NBC News
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A Mediterranean diet that’s loaded with fresh vegetables, fruit and the occasional drink could help preserve your brain into old age, researchers reported Wednesday.
It’s the latest in a series of studies showing that a healthy diet can preserve health, including brain health.
This one’s a little different because it doesn’t seem to show that adding fish to the diet makes any difference. It’s not clear why, but it adds another piece of evidence in favor of dumping junk food and turning instead to fresh salads dressed with olive oil, plenty of fresh fruit, hummus, beans and pasta. Everyone’s brain shrinks as they get older. This study, published in the journal Neurology, found that people in their mid-70s who ate a Mediterranean-style diet lost less brain mass than people who ate a diet more typical of their native Scotland.
“We found that lower adherence to the Mediterranean diet was associated with greater three-year reduction in total brain volume,” Michelle Luciano of the University of Edinburgh in Scotland and colleagues wrote. Related: Vegan diet may save your life and the planet, too
The team used a group of Edinburgh residents who were born in 1936 and have been followed ever since. For this round, the volunteers filled out a food diary and then many of them agreed to have a series of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans of their brains.
The study took them from age 70 to around 76 and the MRIs allowed the researchers to see just when and how their brains changed as they moved from late middle age into early old age. About 400 of the volunteers made it through two MRIs over three years.
Those who ate more fruits, vegetables, olive oil and the like, and less fried food, red meat and cheese had less brain shrinkage, the team found. On average, their brains shrank at about half the rate that would normally be expected over three years for people this age, they said.
Related: Tasty Diet Cuts Heart Disease
“In our study, eating habits were measured before brain volume was, which suggests that the diet may be able to provide long-term protection to the brain,” Luciano said in a statement. “Still, larger studies are needed to confirm these results.”
Resistant to brain disease
People got points for light to moderate drinking — in this case about a third of drink a day to no more than three drinks a day on average for men and two for women.
Dr. David Knopman, a professor of neurology at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota who was not involved in the study, said this could translate to real-life benefits.
“Loss of brain volume is an inevitable part of the aging process,” Knopman told NBC News.
Related: This Diet Helps You Live Longer
“A bigger brain is in general better for you because at least in late life, it makes a person more resistant to the effects of brain diseases,” he added. “People who have bigger brains in general can tolerate more brain pathology, more brain disease, than those who have smaller brains. So the reduced loss in the people who adhered to the Mediterranean diet in general would be expected to protect them from developing dementia.”
Everyone who took part in the study was healthy and living independently, and the study was not designed to show whether healthier eating reduced the risk of dementia. But other studies have shown that good diets can prevent Alzheimer’s and other types of dementia.
Related: Could a Mediterranean diet keep your brain from shrinking?
A 2015 study done at Columbia University also found that people who ate Mediterranean diets had bigger brains. But it also found this may have been caused in part because people who ate Mediterranean diets also are more fish and less of other types of meat.
The Edinburgh team didn’t find any effect from eating meat or fish, and they found education did not seem to matter, either.
Previous research has linked a Mediterranean diet to a reduced risk of heart disease and some cancers, as well as stroke and to a longer life in general. “People who eat healthy are often healthier in many other respects,” Knopman pointed out.
“They're much less likely to be obese, they're much less likely to have diabetes, hypertension, much less likely to smoke, more likely to exercise. And they're probably more likely to adhere to good health behaviors in general.”
Related: Mediterranean Diet May Slow Brain Aging
But a series of studies done in Spain finds the effects are clear even when people are already starting out with healthier diets. The team in Barcelona adds extra olive oil and nuts to the standard diets of Spaniards and finds the benefits on heart health and brain health are clear.
The Edinburgh study only asked people once – when they were 70 – what they ate. So it’s not entirely clear if it takes a lifetime of eating better to help the brain.
More: Health & Wellness Diet & Fitness
25 Mission Statements From the World's Most Valuable Brands
MISSION STATEMENTS 25FROM THE WORLD’S MOST VALUABLE BRANDS
The best example of a mission statement will define your company and its purpose in 30 seconds or less. Great ones avoid buzz words, empty phrases, or mission statements that are so general they could apply to many different companies. It’s a challenge, but you want to capture what your company stands for in a brief and memorable way.
With your mission statement, be sure to cover what the goals of your business are for three primary components: customers, employees, and owners. Be clear and specific, and you’ll highlight the core of what makes your venture unique and worthwhile.
Sometimes it helps to look at the mission statements of other companies to get a better idea of how to write your own mission statement. Gathered below are the mission statements of the world’s 25 most valuable brands in 2015. We’ve also graded each mission statement to demonstrate how effective they are.
Need help writing your own mission statement? HOW TO WRITE A MISSION STATEMENT IN 5 EASY STEPS Click here to read now »
APPLE Mission Statement: Apple designs Macs, the best personal computers in the world, along with OS X, iLife, iWork and professional software. Apple leads the digital music revolution with its iPods and iTunes online store. Apple has reinvented the mobile phone with its revolutionary iPhone and App Store, and is defining the future of mobile media and computing devices with iPad.
MICROSOFT Mission Statement: At Microsoft, our mission is to enable people and businesses throughout the world to realize their full potential. We consider our mission statement a commitment to our customers. We deliver on that commitment by striving to create technology that is accessible to everyone—of all ages and abilities. Microsoft is one of the industry leaders in accessibility innovation and in building products that are safer and easier to use.
GOOGLE Mission Statement: To organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.
COCA-COLA Mission Statement: To refresh the world... To inspire moments of optimism and happiness... To create value and make a difference.
IBM Mission Statement: Dedication to every client’s success. Innovation that matters—for our company and for the world. Trust and personal responsibility in all relationships.
MCDONALD’S Mission Statement: We are focused on delivering great tasting, high-quality food to our customers and providing a world-class experience that makes them feel welcome and valued.
SAMSUNG Mission Statement: Dedicated to making a better world through diverse businesses that today span advanced technology, semiconductors, skyscraper and plant construction, petrochemicals, fashion, medicine, finance, hotels, and more.
TOYOTA Mission Statement: To attract and attain customers with high-valued products and services and the most satisfying ownership experience in America.
GENERAL ELECTRIC Mission Statement: Invent the next industrial era, to build, move, power and cure the world.
FACEBOOK Mission Statement: Give people the power to share and make the world more open and connected.
DISNEY Mission Statement: Be one of the world's leading producers and providers of entertainment and information. Using our portfolio of brands to differentiate our content, services and consumer products, we seek to develop the most creative, innovative and profitable entertainment experiences and related products in the world.
AT&T Mission Statement: Exploit technical innovations for the benefit of AT&T and its customers by implementing next- generation technologies and network advancements in AT&T's services and operations.
AMAZON Mission Statement: We seek to be Earth’s most customer-centric company for four primary customer sets: consumers, sellers, enterprises, and content creators.
LOUIS VUITTON Mission Statement: Create products that embody unique savoir-faire, a carefully preserved heritage and a dynamic engagement with modernity. These creations make our Houses ambassadors of a distinctively refined art de vivre.
CISCO Mission Statement: Shape the future of the Internet by creating unprecedented value and opportunity for our customers, employees, investors, and ecosystem partners.
BMW Mission Statement: The BMW Group is the world’s leading provider of premium products and premium services for individual mobility.
ORACLE Mission Statement: We help you simplify your IT environment so that you can free up money, time, and resources to invest in innovation. We do this by providing a comprehensive and fully integrated stack of cloud applications, platform services, and engineered systems.
NIKE Mission Statement: To bring inspiration and innovation to every athlete* in the world. * “If you have a body, you are an athlete.” — Bill Bowerman
INTEL Mission Statement: Through computing innovation, we push the boundaries of smart and connected technology to make amazing experiences possible for every person on earth.
WAL-MART Mission Statement: Save people money so they can live better.
VERIZON Mission Statement: Enable people and businesses to communicate with each other.
AMERICAN EXPRESS Mission Statement: Be the world’s most respected service brand.
HONDA Mission Statement: Maintaining a global viewpoint, we are dedicated to supplying products of the highest quality, yet at a reasonable price for worldwide customer satisfaction.
MERCEDES-BENZ Mission Statement: To delight our customers in everything we are doing. To continually improve the effectiveness of our Quality Management System and our business processes. To continually improve the quality of our products and services. To have a team-oriented and open minded corporate culture involving employees through leadership and individual acceptance of delegated responsibility To be aware of our environment. To have a professional relationship with our business partners.
BUDWEISER Mission Statement: Be the best beer company in a better world.
Need help writing your own mission statement? HOW TO WRITE A MISSION STATEMENT IN 5 EASY STEPS Click here to read now »
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The internet is freaking out over this spooky prediction by Carl Sagan about the future
It's disturbingly accurate.
BEC CREW 25 JAN 2017
Back in 1995, everyone’s favourite astrophysicist, Carl Sagan, published a book called The Demon-Haunted World, which warned against the dangers of pseudoscience and scientific illiteracy, and encouraged its readers to learn critical and skeptical thinking.
Pretty standard stuff for a socially conscious scientist, but one passage in particular has been blowing up on Twitter this week, and it’s not hard to see why.
Somehow, (we’re not saying time machine, but probably time machine) Sagan managed to predict the state of things as they are today - and it’s unnervingly accurate.
We’re talking the decline in manufacturing jobs; people feeling hopeless about politics; politicians refusing or unable to represent the public interest; and brilliant, revolutionary technologies that never seem to change the lives of anyone but the 1 percent.
The result? Sagan predicts people will opt for superstition and pseudoscience over reality - and even more concerning, he says the public will be intellectually incapable of distinguishing between what makes us feel good, and what’s actually true. Fake news, anyone?
Yep, this passage has got it all:
View image on Twitter
View image on Twitter
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Charles Bergquist ✔ @cbquist
Suspecting Carl Sagan had either a time machine or a crystal ball.
Ok, probably the time machine.
10:33 AM - 23 Jan 2017
11,702 11,702 Retweets 15,392 15,392 likes
So did Sagan somehow know enough about society in 1995 that he could accurately predict what life would be like in a couple of generations, or are we all reading too much into it?
Oddly enough, the way we interpret this kind of prediction actually has a lot to do with how we interpret horoscopes - one of Sagan’s biggest bugbears.
Horoscopes have nothing to do with reality, but they owe their enormous success to the fact that humans tend to see what they want to see.
So while we can be pessimistic about the future of society as a whole, humans are generally pretty optimistic about their individual future prospects - a concept known as optimism bias.
It's actually an evolutionary survival tactic - and that's something horoscopes directly tap into.
As Tali Sharot, a cognitive neuroscientist from University College London, explains for TIME:
"You might expect optimism to erode under the tide of news about violent conflicts, high unemployment, tornadoes and floods and all the threats and failures that shape human life. Collectively we can grow pessimistic - about the direction of our country or the ability of our leaders to improve education and reduce crime. But private optimism, about our personal future, remains incredibly resilient."
Thanks to humanity's optimism bias, you could show someone all the statistics related to divorce, cancer, and average lifespan, and more often than not, they'll choose to believe that those negative experiences won't happen to them.
So when we see horoscopes that tell us we're going to meet our soulmate or get a big promotion this month, we choose to believe it, and don't tend to go back and fact-check it - the horoscope has already done its job by making us feel good.
A similar thing goes on when we're presented with a spookily accurate prediction of the future - part of the cognitive bias that's wired into all humans is that we are drawn to details that confirm our existing beliefs.
As Matt Novak points out over at Gizmodo: "[I]t’s important to remember that the 'accuracy' of predictions is often a Rorschach test. An interpretation of a particular prediction’s accuracy usually says a lot about the people interpreting them, and their own hopes or fears for the future."
We also need to put these predictions into context, because once you read past the viral passage, you'll see that Sagan is kinda trying to blame the state of things in the future on... Beavis and Butthead?
"The dumbing down of America is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, the 30-second sound bites (now down to 10 seconds or less), lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentations on pseudoscience and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance.
As I write, the number one video cassette rental in America is the movie Dumb and Dumber. Beavis and Butthead remains popular (and influential) with young TV viewers. The plain lesson is that study and learning - not just of science, but of anything - are avoidable, even undesirable."
How delighted Sagan would be to know that in 2016, more young people were watching David Attenborough than The X Factor. Mind-numbing television is actually the least of our problems right now.
But even with all that said, we do have to give props to Sagan for coming up with a really cracking prediction for the beginning of 2017. Let's hope for better things to come in the months and years ahead.
