Compared to those who drank less than one glass of fruit or vegetable juice per week, those who drank three or more were 76% less likely to develop Alzheimer’s disease.

Dr. Qi Dai and colleagues out of Vanderbilt School of Medicine reported these results in the September issue of The American Journal of Medicine.

You can read the full article here.

Some other very important points raised from the article include:

• Recent studies indicate that high intake of antioxidant vitamins (vitamins C, E and beta-carotene) does not appear to provide significant protection against Alzheimer’s disease.
• Instead, researchers now believe it’s the conglomerate of phytochemicals in a fruit or vegetable that provides the real benefit.
• “We thought that the underlying component may not be vitamins, that there was maybe something else,” Dai said.
• The skins of fruits and vegetables are particularly rich in these phytochemicals. Think of the tough purple skin of a grape as opposed to the pale, fleshy sweet interior.
• “Recent studies have shown that polyphenols (like resveratrol in wine) extend maximum lifespan by 59 percent and delay age-dependent decay of cognitive performance in animal models.” (Wow, you may want to read that one again)

Several related posts you may enjoy reading include a ranking of fruit antioxidants for brain protection, as well as a post describing a memory boosting phytochemical in strawberries, and finally how grape juice can reverse brain aging.

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Out of the many different types of vegetables, green leafy vegetables appear to be most effective in protecting the brain from memory loss as we get older. At least according to a new study out of Rush University Medical center in Chicago and published in the journal Neurology.

The study’s author Martha Morris points to the high vitamin E content in vegetables as a possible explanation for the beneficial effect, but I doubt it. More likely are the multitude of phytochemicals.

Nonetheless, the magnitude of the effect is impressive. According to Morris,

Compared to people who consumed less than one serving of vegetables a day, people who ate at least 2.8 servings of vegetables a day saw their rate of cognitive change slow by roughly 40 percent

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