Aging, dietary patterns, and cognition

The inevitable rise of the aging population worldwide is accompanied by an increased risk of cognitive impairment and dementia. Healthcare costs related to dementia have been shown to be higher than costs associated with death from other diseases, including cancer and heart disease. Therefore, the prevention of severe cognitive decline and dementia has become a priority in public health. Modifiable changes in lifestyle, including nutrient, multinutrient, and dietary patterns have been associated with protecting against cognitive decline in numerous observational studies. At the moment, there are only a few RCTs that have shown to hold potent preventive strategies on cognition in older healthy adults. Dietary patterns including the Med, DASH, and MIND have shown to hold an important basis on dementia disease prevention, while multinutrient supplementations seem to hold grounds for improving cognition in patients in early stage of dementia. At the moment, even though RCTs testing the use of Med, DASH, and MIND diets on cognitive outcomes are limited, scientific strategies provide a future concept that dementia can be prevented and/or treated in an early stage by improving modifiable lifestyle factors found in daily diets.