Fruit juice - good for the brain?

DOESN'T IT MAKE YOU THIRSTY JUST LOOKING AT IT? (PHOTO: CJCJ).

Fruit juice is great. It tastes nice, it gives you your daily dose of vitamins and apparently it can protect you from Allzheimers. That's according to the results of a 10 year study recently completed by scientsts at Vanderbilt University in Nashville. Qi Dai and colleauges found 1836 dementia-free patients in Seattle, and assessed what they ate and their cognitive function over a decade, paying particular attention to fruit and veg intake.

After controlling for a range of other lifestyle factors such as smoking, diet, exercise and physical activity, the researchers identified a key variable in onset of dementia - intake of fruit juice. Patients who drank fruit juice more than three times a week (they did not specify the type) were 76% less likely to suffer from Alzheimers. 76% is a massive amount, and if it really is due to the juice this is an important finding.

The caution here is the usual one about causation and correlation. The people who drank the juice could have been doing something else right too, like exercising their brain by doing the crossword while they drank their juice. The scientists plan to follow up their study by testing the effect of the ingredient in the juice that they believe is the magic bullet - polyphenols. It's been suggested before that polyphenols help to protect the brain (eg in Green tea via NCNI, or in apples via Sciencedaily), so this might be one step nearer to confirming that. Until they do confirm it, drink juice. And tea. Just to be safe. And because they're nice.

Via The Times, and Eurekalert.