Megan Brooks 2-3 minutes
Eating at least half a serving per day of foods rich in flavonoids — like strawberries, oranges, peppers, and apples — may help lower the risk of age-related cognitive decline, new research shows.
Among the different types of flavonoids, flavones (found in some spices and yellow or orange fruits and vegetables) and anthocyanins (found in blueberries, blackberries, and cherries) seem to have most protective effect, the researchers report.
“There is mounting evidence suggesting flavonoids are powerhouses when it comes to preventing your thinking skills from declining as you get older,” study investigator Walter Willett, MD, DrPH, Harvard University, Boston, Massachusetts, said in a statement.
“Our results are exciting because they show that making simple changes to your diet could help prevent cognitive decline,” said Willett.
The study was published online July 28 in the journal Neurology.
Antioxidant Punch
Flavonoids, naturally occurring phytochemicals found in plants, are strong antioxidants. Considering the likely role of oxidative stress in age-related cognitive decline, flavonoids have been proposed as potentially important preventive.
For the study, Willett and colleagues prospectively examined associations between long-term dietary flavonoids (flavonols, flavones, flavanones, flavan-3-ols, anthocyanins, polymeric flavonoids, and proanthocyanidins) and subjective cognitive decline (SCD) in 49,493 women from the Nurses’ Health Study (1984-2006) and 27,842 men from the Health Professionals Follow-up Study (1986-2002).
Those in the highest quintile of flavonoid consumption consumed about 600 mg daily on average while those in the lowest quintile only got about 150 mg daily.
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Cite this: Flavonoids Dietary ‘Powerhouses’ for Cognitive Decline Prevention – Medscape – Aug 09, 2021.