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The Paradox Of Choice That Hits You Right In The Gut:
One of the things that can happen too easily to any of us is complication.
Nowhere is this more present than in the dieting world.
Other than, “Listen to what your Grandma said.”, how are you supposed to know what to do?
What plan should you follow, what mix of foods should you eat or avoid?
There’s a million of them out there, including the crazy celebrity stuff if you enjoy hot sauce and lemon water a bit too much.
Well, a Harvard team set-out to start clearing things up a little. And where they went was somewhere both strange and accidentally-awesome…
The Short Answer:
- Choosing the right nutrition plan can be difficult.
- Many have been designed for one specific goal or school-of-thought.
- But some of them might have hidden benefits we’re only just discovering.
- A Harvard team looked at study data from more than 159,000 subjects over 30 years.
- There were 6 general plans identified.
- All of them resulted in better cognitive health later in life.
- But one of them beat its closest competitor by almost 2x.
- That one was the DASH diet.
- What’s accidentally-amazing is that DASH is not targeted at brain health, but reducing blood-pressure.
- For those following DASH, they were 41% less likely to report subjective cognitive decline.
- This held true, even when compared to some of the best diets that have ever been designed.
- One of them was actually designed by Harvard doctors!
- DASH even beat the cognitive scores of one designed to reduce inflammation.
- This is particularly-ironic, because inflammation is also tied to cognitive-decline!
- The DASH Magic comes down to a few things.
- Healthier blood-pressure improves brain-circulation and processing-speed.
- AMOF, BP is one of the easiest things to modify that can reduce the likelihood of Dementia.
- It gets you to reduce Saturated Fat and Sodium, but also increase Potassium and Magnesium.
- Potassium makes your blood-vessels work better and Magnesium protects your brain and increases neuroplasticity.
- And you need more Magnesium, because 80% of the US is deficient in it!
- So a lot of what people call “mental aging” could be nothing more than “fixing the plumbing”. And the DASH results are evidence of that.
- But there are other diets that might be even better for your brain than DASH…
Read on to find out the details…
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The Accidental-Awesome Of Infinite Experimentation:
So, history is full of Accidental Awesome.
Alexander Fleming basically invented antibiotics over lunch.
Your grandfather can keep his shoes on largely due to sticker-bushes.
And H.B. Reese, the Sauron of candy, once merged peanut butter and chocolate so masterfully, he accidentally created The One Ring when he invented peanut butter cups.
We just might have something similar for nutrition-plans. Starting now.
How To Win A Race You Didn’t Even Know You Were In:
So a team from Harvard looked at just over 159,000 subjects across 30 years.
Every four years, the mostly-female subjects average-aged 44 at the start, would report what they ate.
And then, the team filtered all that data against a set of 6 nutrition-plans subjects followed.
This led to one bizarre but clear winner out of all the ones tested.
It handily beat all the others, especially when it came to brain health.
But strangely, it wasn’t designed for that at all.
It was made to help reduce high blood-pressure.
The DASH Diet Beats Everything Else By Almost 2x:
And that diet was called the DASH diet.
Using the main gauge as a set of 7 questions on user-reported cognitive-changes,
That plan showed a 41% lower rate of subjective cognitive decline for those following it the closest.
Here’s the crazy part. DASH beat-out five other diets that were all designed by scientists specifically to be as healthy as possible.
DASH’s Competition. Engineered By Scientists, But Still Inferior:
For those who want to nerd out, they were:
1) The Alternate Healthy Eating Index, 2010
2) The Healthful Plant-Based Diet Index
3) The Planetary Health Diet Index
4) Reversed Empirical Dietary Indices For Hyperinsulinemia
5) Reversed Empirical Dietary Indices For Inflammatory Pattern
What do those mean?
#1 is currently Harvard’s best effort at a general guide for healthy eating.
#2 is presumed to be even healthier because of some pretty great effects of a plant-based diet.
And #5 is specifically targeted at reducing Inflammation, which weirdly-enough is also implicated in?
-You guessed it! Cognitive Decline!
Sometimes Small Changes Can Make A Big Difference:
So what the hell is going on with DASH that made it beat every other contestant in Subjective Cognitive Decline by almost 2x?
The big bomb in the room is this: Perhaps the secret to reduced cognitive-decline, even on phone-interviews with the subjects over all those years,
Is nothing more complicated than fixing the plumbing?
Lower & more-healthy blood-pressure improves circulation to the brain.
It even reduces damage to the small vessels that can masquerade as aging-related decline instead of from some other source.
Not only that, but this damage shows up right at the area providing the best, most high-speed signal in your whole brain. White matter.
And here’s the second big bomb that very few people know about: High blood-pressure is one of the main risk-factors for Dementia.
AND, you can actually influence it, of course!
Most people think cognitive-decline is just plain ole’ Aging.
It could just be plumbing.
So What The Hell Is A DASH Diet Anyway?:
Here are the basics. Some values are based on a 2000 calorie/day example:
1) Total Sodium = no more than 2300mg/day, or even-stricter at 1500mg/day.
2) 6-8 servings of whole-grains
2a) Usually this means whole-wheat pasta or brown rice instead of regular pasta, potatoes, or white rice
2b) This can also be Quinoa, Farro, Buckwheat, Kasha, Bulgur, or others
3) 4-5 servings of Fruits
4) 4-5 servings of vegetables
4a) This would be non-starchy and include beans, lentils, leafy greens, spinach, kale, collard greens, etc.
5) 2-3 servings of low-to-zero-fat dairy
6) 2-3 servings of unsaturated fats or oils
7) 6 servings of lean poultry or fish/day
8) 4-5 servings of nuts & seeds/week (because they’re calorie-dense and easy to OD on)
8a) Btw, 1/4 cup of nuts is about 180 calories
8b) Test this yourself and see what that looks like in the palm of your hand!
9) 2 servings maximum of red meat per week
10) Sweets, desserts & foods with added-sugar at a maximum of 5 servings/week.
11) Saturated fat must be less than 6% of total calories
11a) Some sources include butter, full-fat dairy of any kind like sour cream, cheese, ice cream, etc., fatty red meats, coconut oil, palm kernel oil
11b) This also means processed meats like bacon, sausage, and some deli-meats as well
11c) SURPRISE! Baked-goods, pastries, processed snacks, and fried foods are all off the menu as high-fat sources, too.
12) Reduce processed & restaurant foods as much as possible.
12a) They’re really just treated as sources of Sodium & Saturated-Fat by DASH
13) A typical meal plate might look like:
13a) 50% Non-starchy veg + fruit
13b) 25% Whole grains/beans
13c) 25% Lean protein like beans, poultry or fish. Almost never red or processed meat
13d) This would include almost zero salty sauces or dressings
14) No more than 2 alcoholic drinks/day for men and 1/day for women
14a) There have been some serious recent revisions to this idea and there may actually be no safe level of alcohol-consumption.
But Wait! The Stealth-Health Tricks Don’t End There:
Here are the other big secrets people really don’t talk about from this gem of the 1990s.
It’s not just that DASH has you getting less saturated fat that helps your blood-chemistry & vessels.
It actually makes it really hard to eat food that’s the unhealthy processed stuff.
You’re more or less stuck doing the generally-healthier path of home-cooking.
Still weirder than that is it gets you to put more Potassium and Magnesium into your diet.
And that is not just some Woo-Woo hand-wavy stuff about, “Getting your minerals, Man!”
Both of those turn out to be great for your circulatory-system, brain-cell protection, and neuroplasticity.
So that’s at least two different pathways that help.
And whether they planned it this way or not, the authors of DASH are helping a ton of people protect their brains in another stealth-health way.
Because 80% of the Western world is deficient in Magnesium.
Especially the US.
-BOOM!
BONUS ROUND! More Hidden Benefits And Next-Steps:
So there you are, the magic of the DASH diet probably does way more than was ever planned.
Oh wait, you know what else it does besides help your circulation?
It even freaking reduces nutrition-derived Inflammation!
And makes it easier to lose weight by improving Insulin-Sensitivity.
Not to mention it’s probably healthier than even The Mediterranean Diet because it discourages full-fat anything.
And for those who wish to venture further.
The MIND diet is an even healthier version of DASH that’s better for your brain.
And a diet that’s high in vegetables can reduce your biological age by at least two to three months, even at the beginner-level.
But those are for another time.
For now, just take a moment to enjoy the amazing quantity of evidence behind an unassuming hero of the nutrition world!
References & Links:
• Sources: Harvard
• Source Study: JAMA-Neurology – Dietary Patterns and Indicators of Cognitive Function
