Living longer and healthier with The MIND Diet
As luck would have it, a diet designed to help prevent brain disease in later years turns out to be the healthiest diet we could all follow throughout our lives.
And like everything else with the pillars, this diet can help improve every part of our lives, from brain health, to mental health, to physical health.
If you’re looking for an easier way to follow an eating or diet plan that’s great for your brain, you should look at the MIND diet. And like so much else with the pillars it’s not just great for brain health, but for your overall health.
“MIND” stands for “Mediterranean-DASH Intervention for Neurodegenerative Delay” and combines the best of two other highly-thought-of diets, the Mediterranean and DASH. DASH being Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension.
The idea behind the MIND diet was a way to keep the brain as healthy as possible for as long as possible to prevent the onset of cognitive decline and neurodegenerative diseases (like Alzheimer’s), but it’s gained in popularity as a way to keep your brain healthy and operating at its best throughout your life. And all the other great benefits that can unleash.
Not only do these diets help maximize brain health, they’re also great for weight management, for lowering blood pressure, reducing the risk of heart disease and diabetes, and helping with a number of other diseases.
The 10 main foods recommended for the mind diet include:
- Green leafy vegetables, like kale and spinach, and ideally six or more servings per week.
- A mixture of all other vegetables and ideally once per day.
- Berries such as strawberries, blackberries, and blueberries at least twice per week.
- Any kind of nuts and ideally five or more servings per week.
- Olive oil and at least a spoonful a day.
- Whole grains like oatmeal, brown rice, and quinoa, and at least three servings per day.
- Fish, and ideally oily fatty fish like tuna, mackerel, and salmon and at least once per week.
- Beans at least four times per week, and ideally lentils, black beans, Garbanzo beans, and soybeans.
- Poultry at least twice a week, chicken or Turkey, but please, not deep fried or breaded.
- And finally, and when you’re old enough, one glass of wine daily is also thought to help.
The even better news is that the MIND diet doesn’t focus on portion or calorie control. That doesn’t mean you can eat as much of everything as you want, but you certainly won’t have to starve yourself to follow this brain and life changing diet. Just get creative.