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September 6th, 2016
Fish Really IS Brain Food, New Study Shows
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If you’re a foodie and a seafood fan, a new study centering on fish and brain health should come as good news.
Fish has long been referred to as “brain food,” and it’s not a surprise that seafood is rich in essential fatty acids and other nutrients understood to be beneficial to cognitive structures. But more research and knowledge is always welcome when it comes to strategizing diet, and these findings are super useful if fatty tuna is one of your favorite indulgences. (Or spicy yellow tail. Or volcano rolls!)
In fact, essential fatty acids aren’t even the sum of fish’s impact on the brain, according to research published this month in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine. Lead investigator Cyrus Raji, MD, PhD, currently in radiology residency training at UCLA, worked with a team to analyze data from more than 260 study participants – starting way back in 1989.
What Dr. Raji and his team discovered was that fish didn’t just boost heart health – but that eating baked or broiled fish at least once weekly seemed to affect strong cognitive benefits for study participants.
In a news release, he explained that seafood’s brain benefits were even more long-ranging than researchers suspected – and that diet may be a huge part of those findings:
Our study shows that people who ate a diet that included baked or broiled, but not fried, fish have larger brain volumes in regions associated with memory and cognition … We did not find a relationship between omega-3 levels and these brain changes, which surprised us a little. It led us to conclude that we were tapping into a more general set of lifestyle factors that were affecting brain health of which diet is just one part.”
Researchers took into account the general dietary habits of those participating the study during testing. Dr. Raji adds:
The subset of CHS participants answered questionnaires about their eating habits, such as how much fish did they eat and how was it prepared … baked or broiled fish contains higher levels of omega-3s than fried fish because the fatty acids are destroyed in the high heat of frying, so we took that into consideration when we examined their brain scans.”
Weekly fish eaters also were more likely to be college educated, and senior investigator James T. Becker, PhD, professor of psychiatry at the Pitt School of Medicine, observed:
This suggests that lifestyle factors, in this case eating fish, rather than biological factors contribute to structural changes in the brain … A confluence of lifestyle factors likely are responsible for better brain health, and this reserve might prevent or delay cognitive problems that can develop later in life.”
The news release announcing research on diet, fish and brain health also notes that 80 million people will develop dementia by the year 2040, and that the right food and exercise could diminish that number.
People are reaching for the Smart stik every day as part of their brain food!
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