The Nourished Brain: The Latest Science on Food’s Power for Protecting the Brain from Alzheimer’s and Dementia by Cheryl Musatto offers hope in the fight against Alzheimer’s and dementia, even for those with familial genetic markers. Author Cheryl Mussatto is one of those people. She lost her Mom to Alzheimer’s and her Dad to dementia. In this book, she combines her own experience with her parents and the stories of others who have lost loved ones to the ravages of dementia in its different forms. In the first chapter, she offers an introduction to Alzheimer’s, what it is, statistics on the prevalence, incidence, mortality, cost, and caregiving. For instance, I learned that “two-thirds of Americans over age 65 with Alzheimer’s dementia (3.4 million) are women.”
The rest of the chapters offer steps to age-proof your brain based on specific findings related to neurodegenerative disorders from researchers from around the world. Mussatto taps into her 25 years of expertise as a registered and licensed dietitian to offer beneficial dietary changes and other valuable lifestyle modifications to help round-out ways to preserve and protect the brain from dementia. She introduces the MIND diet, a hybrid of the Mediterranean and DASH diets, which is based on studies that looked at using diet to delay or prevent dementia and is designed to protect the brain.
This book is a quick read. Its easy-to-understand language delivers helpful, useful nutritional and health information and guidance to implement it in everyday life. The final chapter even provides recipes to try.
I give this book 5 stars and strongly recommend it to anyone who is health-conscious or interested in learning how to help fight the prospect of an Alzheimer's or dementia diagnosis in the future. I received this book as a free review, copy and this review is posted in collaboration with #BookTasters.
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