Food For Thought

From Massachusetts General Hospital’s Mind, Mood & Memory.

- 

WANT A KEENER MIND AND A more balanced mood in older age? A healthy diet may hold the key. Although it’s a small organ, the brain is metabolically the most active organ of the body, and it requires continuous nourishment for optimal functioning.

“Diet has a very important effect on brain function and cognition, and mounting evidence suggests that enhancing your diet by paying more attention to the range of foods you eat and the quality of those foods can help improve your chances of staying sharp and mentally healthy,” says Uma Naidoo, M.D., a psychiatrist at Massachusetts General Hospital, an instructor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, and an expert on the effects of food on neurochemistry.

DIRECT PATHWAY

An important indication of the brain/diet connection is recent research that for the first time conclusively links dietary patterns in older adults to specific changes in the size and functioning of the hippocampus, a brain region critical to learning, memory and mental health. The study, published in the journal