Eating just one serving of leafy green vegetables each day slows cognitive decline and may protect your brain from dementia. This study was conducted on older US adults and published in the journal Neurology. Specifically it showed that people who ate one or two servings of leafy green vegetables each day had a brain approximately 11 years younger than people who rarely ate leafy greens! Who wouldn’t want a younger brain? A healthy, sharp brain, with a good memory makes life significantly easier. A healthier brain is also associated with a better mood and better stress coping abilities. Adding leafy green vegetables to your diet is a very easy and inexpensive way of protecting this vital organ. In this study, the researchers believe the particularly protective nutrients for the brain are folate, vitamin K and the antioxidant lutein. You will get a lot of these nutrients through vegetables, and they’ll be even more concentrated if you drink raw vegetable juices. There are many recipes and ideas in my book Raw Juices Can Save Your Life. According to Richard Isaacson, Weill Cornell Medicine, New York City, "This study adds to the rapidly evolving and convincing evidence that you are what you eat when it comes to brain health. From a practical clinical perspective, regular intake of green leafy vegetables should be a standard part of a risk reduction paradigm to delay cognitive decline throughout the lifespan." Increasing the amount of vegetables you eat is always a good idea and will improve your health in many ways. It is also important to reduce the amount of unhealthy foods you eat; particularly sugar and industrial seed oils (canola, cottonseed, soybean, corn, etc.). Those foods are known to raise inflammation in the brain and speed up cognitive decline. The world as a whole is consuming too much omega 6 fat from industrial seed oils and not enough omega 3 fats, from oily fish, pastured meat and fish oil capsules. A diet high in sugar or refined carbohydrates which are rapidly digested into sugar, encourages the overgrowth of harmful gut bugs. These bugs can release waste products that injure brain cells, increasing the risk of dementia. There are many more strategies for reducing the risk of dementia in my book Alzheimer’s: What you must know to protect your brain. The above statements have not been evaluated by the FDA and are not intended to diagnose, treat or cure any disease. Reference

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