Go On a Seafood Diet? Just Might Help Protect You From Alzheimer's

My husband is going to love this.  He'd live on seafood if he could.  Every week when we go out he orders a shrimp cocktail, then has a salad with salmon.

He does it because he loves it but now there's an even better reason. Eating seafood just might protect you from Alzheimer's.

A new study has found that older adults with a major risk gene for Alzheimer’s disease who ate at least one seafood serving per week showed fewer signs of Alzheimer’s-related brain changes. In contrast, this association was not found in the brains of volunteers who ate fish weekly but did not carry the risk gene.

The researchers also examined the brains for levels of mercury, which can be found in seafood and is known to be harmful to the brain and nervous system. They found that seafood consumption was associated with increased mercury levels in the brains but not the amount of beta amyloid protein plaques and tau protein tangles, the hallmarks of Alzheimer’s disease.

The study's purpose was to see whether seafood consumption is related to brain mercury levels, and whether either seafood consumption or brain mercury levels may play a role in the brain changes that lead to Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias.

At the start of the study, the participants were cognitively normal, but some eventually developed cognitive impairment and dementia. 

So should you go on an all-seafood diet?  Not eat all the food you see but an actual meal plan of fish, and then more fish?  Unless you have the gene, it's not going to protect you.  But it's not a bad idea to cut down on red meat, either.