Leafy greens tied to cognitive health
DEAR DOCTOR: My girlfriend is all-in on one of those low-carb diets and has pretty much stopped eating vegetables. (When she does eat carbs, it’s the bread and sweets she craves). I’m hoping one of the new studies about leafy greens and brain health might change her habits.
DEAR READER: Any time you follow a restrictive diet — and the low-carb variety certainly qualifies — you run the risk of shorting the body of a range of nutrients essential to health and well-being.
Fortunately, for your proposed plan to get your girlfriend to dig her salad bowl out of storage, the leafy greens in the studies you’ve referenced are low in carbohydrates and high in a range of health benefits. And according to several recent studies, they may quite literally be brain food.
In a study published last December in the journal Neurology, researchers found that older individuals who ate at least one serving per day of leafy greens, like kale, lettuce, spinach, collard or mustard greens, fared better on tests that measure memory and thinking skills than did those who rarely or never included those vegetables in their diets.
According to the researchers, at the end
of the five years, after adjusting for variables like age, sex, education, participation in cognitive and physical activities, smoking and alcohol consumption, the leafy green eaters were an equivalent of 11 years younger mentally than the other group. This bolsters the outcomes of previous studies, which found that the nutrients in these vegetables can put the brakes on cognitive decline.
The specific nutrients in those leafy greens that are most likely to be beneficial turn out to be vitamin K, lutein, folate (also known as folic acid) and beta-carotene. Researchers at the University of Illinois zeroed in on lutein, a carotenoid vitamin that accumulates in neural tissues. The results of their study suggest that, because lutein appears to support both structure and function in the neural membranes, it may be neuroprotective.
Elizabeth Ko, M.D., is an internist and primary care physician at UCLA Health.
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