The Brain Is Hungry for Good Fats. Against Trendy Healthism

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It seems that our brain has a weakness for fats. Not fats of any kind, mind you, but the good ones, the ones that nature has put in fish, nuts and olive oil. Science now confirms: removing them from the table is not only a dietary mistake, but a favor to dementia . Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, multiple sclerosis: scary words that today, researchers say, also have something to do with the shopping list. An English study published in 2024, entitled "Dietary N 6 Polyunsaturated Fatty Acid Intake and Brain Health in Uk Biobank" and conducted by J. Gu, Y. Bao and colleagues on 169,295 participants of the Uk Biobank cohort, discovered that those who eat few omega 6 fatty acids (which are found, coincidentally, in healthy and simple foods) run a higher risk of damaging the central nervous system. And not by a little: +30 percent for dementia in general, +42 percent for Parkinson's, +65 percent for multiple sclerosis. Not only is the "quality" but also the "quantity" of our brain compromised. MRIs show atrophy of the hippocampus, the center of memory, and reduced white matter, the set of nerve fibers. It's as if the brain were starving, a specific hunger, that of "good" fats. Other research supports this theory. One published on PubMed Central says that omega 3 reduce oxidative stress and inflammation.

The Vitacog (Vitamins And Cognition) study shows that B vitamins slow cognitive decline, but only if omega-3s are present in sufficient quantities. The Mdpi (Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute) confirms that omega-3s improve synaptic plasticity and help in the early stages of Alzheimer's and Parkinson's. The Aric (Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities) study also suggests that some saturated fats, found in nuts and dairy products, are good for the brain, unlike the usual suspects, their "bad" unsaturated cousins. This is where diets come in, the real ones, the therapeutic ones. The Dash (Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension), designed to combat hypertension but with many points in common with the indications for improving brain health, recommends fruit, vegetables, whole grains and few saturated fats. The Mediterranean, which Italians know but often betray, relies on extra virgin olive oil, fish and legumes. The Mind (Mediterranean-Dash Intervention for Neurodegenerative Delay), which combines the previous two, focuses on green vegetables, berries and good fats. All three have an effect: they lower the risk of dementia by up to 25 percent. But while science advances, the real diet goes in another direction. In too many cases, some (not very up-to-date) health professionals who deal with diets recommend excessively cutting fats for heart patients, hypertensive patients and overweight patients. Result: you cut everything, even what you shouldn't. And then there are the health (and unhealthy) fads that do a lot of damage.

Among these, do-it-yourself slimming diets stand out, which eliminate fat in the name of a slim body and an aesthetic that is often far from true physical health. But the brain does not follow trends, and without essential fatty acids it risks struggling. In Italy, the situation is serious. Dementia affects 5 percent of people over 65 and one in three over 85. Alzheimer's affects over half of dementia, with an incidence that increases with age. Parkinson's affects 0.3 percent of the population, one percent over 60. All of this comes at a price. We are talking about Italian families who spend more than 40,000 euros a year to care for a relative with Alzheimer's, 80 percent of which comes out of their pockets. We know that multiple sclerosis costs the country two billion a year, Parkinson's almost as much. Costs tragically destined to increase. In all this, we do not want to say that it would be enough to put back on the table some blue fish and a handful of walnuts but it would be a choice in the right direction, useful to stop this wave of neurodegenerative diseases. The brain, they say, is made up of 60 percent fat. So, is it not the case to offer it the right ones?

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