A nine year study by Chicago’s Rush University recently revealed that a diet rich in fish could help to ward off Alzheimer’s for those with a genetic risk of developing the disease.
The surprising research, led by Rush’s professor of nutritional epidemiology, Martha Clare Morris, has contradicted popular beliefs that mercury found in fish can lead to mental decline.
“Everybody’s saying seafood has so many health benefits, but everybody’s afraid of the mercury,” said Morris.
“We saw absolutely no evidence that higher levels of mercury in the brain were associated with any of the neuropathologies associated with dementia”.
Morris’ research examined several human brains from 2004 to 2013. While those who eat more seafood may have more mercury in their brains, her team found that there is no common link between higher brain levels of mercury neurotoxins, and the kind of brain damage typical of Alzheimer’s disease.
The study has just been published in the February 2016 edition of the Journal of the American Medical Association.
Morris and her team also found that eating just moderate amounts of seafood could have a protective effect on people with a specific genetic risk of developing the disease.
Dr. Robert Laforce, of Laval University in Quebec, Canada, confirmed that the findings suggest that “seafood can be consumed without substantial concern of mercury contamination diminishing its possible cognitive benefit in older adults.”
Edeltraut Kroger, from Laval University’s same department, said: “Fish intake, particularly as part of a healthy diet, such as the Mediterranean diet, has been linked with decreased Alzheimer’s disease or slower disease progression.
“It is to this day not quite clear whether the reason for the benefit of fish is to be found in its n-3 unsaturated fatty acid content, or whether the benefit from fish-containing diets is more complicated to understand”.