Blog

Fantastic news for fish lovers comes from America this month as US scientists reveal that fish could protect against Alzheimer’s disease.

People who eat baked or grilled fish on a weekly basis may be improving their brain health and reducing the risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease, according to a new study.

The key, it would seem, is in the cooking! Grilling or baking fish preserves its vital Omega-3 fatty acids which help protect the brain, say researchers.

Researchers from the University of Pittsburgh studied a group of 260 healthy volunteers with an average age of 76 and the findings of the decade-long study were presented at the annual Radiological Society of North America meeting

Brain scans carried out ten years later showed that those who did not eat fish regularly had suffered much more shrinkage in areas of the brain linked to working memory.

A further five years on, they found that 31% of non-regular fish eaters had gone on to develop Alzheimer’s or MCI, compared with between 3% and 8% of those who ate fish at least once a week.

Cyrus Raji, of the University of Pittsburgh Medical Centre and School of Medicine, said: “This is the first study to establish a direct relationship between fish consumption, brain structure and Alzheimer’s risk.

“The results showed that people who consumed baked or broiled (grilled) fish at least one time per week had better preservation of grey matter volume on MRI in brain areas at risk for Alzheimer's disease.”