Free Power Foods for the Brain by Neal Barnard Page A

products, along with mild to moderate alcohol consumption, cut the risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease over the next five years by 32 to 40 percent. 5
    The same sort of diet pattern made less difference in a French study. 24 Researchers tracked the health of 1,410 people in Bordeaux, finding that this sort of dietary pattern did not reduce the risk of Alzheimer’s disease or other kinds of dementia over the five-year study, although it did seem to slow decline in some cognitive tests.
    For most of us, a “Mediterranean diet” pattern is a change in the right direction. It certainly beats the kind of diet I grew up with, and that may be true for you, too. But my assessment is that we can do better. In the same way that people following chicken- or fish-based diets do not do as well as people who avoid meats altogether when it comes to their weight, their diabetes risk, or their heart health, the same is very likely true for brain health as well.
    So I would suggest taking the best of the Mediterranean pattern—the vegetables, fruits, beans, and grains—and skipping the fish and oil. We’ll talk about alcohol in the next chapter.

Understanding Your Blood Pressure
    Checking your blood pressure, your health-care provider records two numbers (e.g., 120/80). Here is what they mean:
The first number is your systolic blood pressure. It is the wave of pressure that comes with each heartbeat.
The second number is your diastolic blood pressure and represents the relaxation between heartbeats.
    A blood pressure below 120/80 is considered normal. A pressure between 120/80 and 140/90 is called prehypertension, and higher values are called hypertension.
    So far, we have mostly focused on things to avoid—toxic metals and “bad” fats in particular. But there are certain nutrients that you want to be sure to include in your regular diet—four vitamins that protect your health, including your brain function. In the following chapter, we’ll see how they work and where to find them.

Vitamin E Protects Against Free Radicals
    Vitamin E protects your cells. Specifically, it knocks out free radicals, those angry torpedoes that form, in part, due to copper and iron, as we saw in chapter 2 . Vitamin E is an
antioxidant
. It neutralizes free radicals as they arise.
    This is important for every part of your body. But it is critical for your brain. Skin cells and muscle cells can be replaced, andred blood cells and white blood cells turn over so quickly, they practically have a sell-by date. But brain cells are forever. Your ability to regenerate new ones is very limited, and there just aren’t a lot of shiny new replacement parts ready to stand in for brain cells that have died.
    Every brain cell, the axon that extends from it, and the synapses that link it with other cells are fragile. Like an old stone statue in a town square assaulted day after day by air pollutants and acid rain, each brain cell is nicked and pockmarked by the microscopic attacks of free radicals. Vitamin E is a key part of your antioxidant shield.
    So, does it work? Does vitamin E actually protect your brain cells? Dutch researchers analyzed the diets of 5,395 people, all of whom were fifty-five or older as the study began. They tracked how much vitamin E they were getting in foods, and they then followed them over the next decade. It turned out that those who got the most vitamin E cut their risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of dementia by about 25 percent. 1
    Similarly, the Chicago researchers found that in older people followed over a four-year period, Alzheimer’s disease developed in 14.3 percent of those who had relatively little vitamin E in their diets,
but in only 5.9 percent of those who got the most vitamin E
. 2 Here is the math: Every 5 milligrams of vitamin E in a person’s daily diet reduced the risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease by 26 percent. 3
    In the Dutch study, it did not matter if you had the APOE e4