In this study, over a period of 16 years from 1986 to 2002, 28,000 US men were tracked regarding their daily eating and drinking of fruits and vegetables and the relationship to subjective cognitive function during that time. When the data was first collected the average age of the men was 51 years.
The outcome of the study revealed 47 percent of the men who drank a small glass of orange juice every day were less likely to develop poor cognitive abilities than the men who drank less than one serving per month.
The study also found that men experiencing less reduction in memory function were the men who ate the most vegetables and were 34 percent less likely to report cognitive loses.
“Fruits and vegetables are rich in vitamins and nutrients, including antioxidants, that can help protect the brain,” said Hannah Gardener, a researcher at the University of Miami who was not involved in the research, according to the Daily Mail.
“One of the most important factors in this study is that we were able to research and track such a large group of men over a 20-year period of time, allowing for very telling results,” said Changzheng Yuan, a research fellow at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, and who was the study’s lead author as well.
Yuan suggests that it is generally best to consume no more than four to six ounces of fruit juices per day because fruit juices are normally high in calories from the high concentration of fructose sugars in them.
According to the Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary, “dementia is a usually progressive condition marked by the development of multiple cognitive deficits, such as memory impairment, aphasia (the loss of the power to use or comprehend words usually resulting from brain damage), and the inability to plan and initiate complex behavior.”
Also according to Merriam-Webster, dementia is also “diagnosed only when both memory and another cognitive function are each affected severely enough to interfere with a person’s ability to carry out routine daily activities.”
It is estimated that 46.8 million people lived with dementia in 2015 worldwide and the number will rise to 131.5 million by 2050, according to the London-based non-profit organization Alzheimer’s Disease International.
