Dementia risk may be reduced through diet

 Natural plant compounds known as polyphenols, found in berries, tea, cocoa, coffee, and extra virgin olive oil, may positively influence biological processes linked to Alzheimer’s disease and other disorders characterized by the gradual loss of nerve cells, according to a review by researchers at Semmelweis University. The analysis, published in Nutrients, suggests that these bioactive compounds may contribute to healthy brain aging.

Researchers at Semmelweis University reviewed the findings of hundreds of previous laboratory, animal, population-based, and clinical studies. The studies reviewed suggest that polyphenols may support nerve cell function through their antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties while helping counteract harmful processes associated with brain aging. 

Particular attention has been paid to the Mediterranean diet, which is rich in vegetables, fruits, legumes, whole grains, fish, and olive oil, as well as the MIND diet, which is based on Mediterranean dietary principles. The MIND diet was specifically developed to support brain health by emphasizing leafy green vegetables and berries while limiting the consumption of red meat, butter, cheese, sweets, and fried and fast foods.

Among the compounds frequently examined in the reviewed studies were EGCG, one of the main antioxidants found in green tea; the pigments responsible for the color of berries; flavanols found in cocoa; and curcumin, the compound that gives turmeric its characteristic yellow color. These compounds are commonly found in plant-based diets, including the Mediterranean diet. 

“Polyphenols are not miracle cures, but research suggests they may be promising tools for supporting healthy brain aging. The focus, however, should not be on dietary supplements but on a varied diet rich in plant-based foods,” said Dr. Mónika Fekete, Assistant Professor at the Institute of Preventive Medicine and Public Health of Semmelweis University and senior author of the study. 

A substantial proportion of polyphenols is not absorbed directly. Instead, they are transformed by bacteria living in the gut into compounds that may influence inflammatory processes, cellular energy metabolism, and, through these mechanisms, nervous system function. Because the composition of the gut microbiome varies considerably from person to person, the same foods may not produce identical biological effects in everyone.

“This may help explain why the same diet does not affect everyone in the same way. In the future, personalized nutrition could help us better understand who is most likely to benefit from a polyphenol-rich diet,” said Dr. Noémi Mózes, Assistant Professor at the Institute of Preventive Medicine and Public Health of Semmelweis University and first author of the study. 

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), more than 55 million people worldwide are living with dementia, and that number is expected to rise in the coming decades. Dementia is one of the most significant health challenges associated with aging, which is why growing attention is being paid to lifestyle factors – including diet – that may help maintain brain health and reduce the risk of cognitive decline.

The researchers emphasize that despite encouraging findings from human studies, there is currently insufficient evidence to recommend any single food or nutrient as a stand-alone strategy for preventing dementia.
According to the authors, healthy brain aging depends not on any one “superfood” but on long-term eating habits. In other words, there is currently no miracle diet that can prevent Alzheimer’s disease. However, existing evidence suggests that regularly eating more vegetables, fruits, berries, fiber-rich foods, fish, and nuts while limiting highly processed foods may help support healthy brain aging and preserve cognitive function over time.  

Nature’s Hidden Bioactive Compounds
Bioactive compounds, including polyphenols, are naturally occurring substances found in plants, animals, and microorganisms. Although they are not considered essential nutrients like vitamins or minerals, their biological activity may help support normal bodily functions and overall health.

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Journal

Nutrients

Eating an avocado a day lowers heart disease risk factor for people with obesity

 

 Eating an avocado every day may decrease heart disease risk in adults with obesity, according to a recent study led by researchers in the Penn State Department of Nutritional Sciences and published in the Journal of Clinical Lipidology.

The team found that regular avocado consumption was associated with a reduced concentration of low-density lipoprotein (LDL) particles — proteins that transport cholesterol through the body — in the blood by an amount that corresponds to an approximate 4% reduction in heart disease risk.

“If people want to improve the quality of their diet, making one small change might be a more feasible strategy than attempting to change their entire diet,” said Janhavi Damani, postdoctoral scholar at Penn State and first author of the study. “For people with obesity, including avocados in their daily diet might be a good starting place.”

LDL particles are a separate risk factor for heart disease from LDL cholesterol — the so-called “bad cholesterol” that is a significant risk for heart disease. The risk posed by LDL particles is typically higher in people with abdominal obesity, the researchers said.

LDL cholesterol must be transported through the body by a protein particle. When there are more protein particles carrying LDL, this increases the risk for heart disease, even if the amount of cholesterol remains the same.

“Imagine two people with the same high levels of LDL cholesterol,” Damani said. “Person A carries their cholesterol in fewer, larger LDL particles, and Person B carries their cholesterol in more, smaller LDL particles. Person B’s heart disease risk would be higher because their overall particle count is higher even though a test of their LDL cholesterol would look identical.”

These small particles can more easily penetrate artery walls and contribute to build-up on artery walls known as plaque, Damani explained. Plaque contributes to heart disease risk by restricting the amount of blood that can fit through a blood vessel and reducing the blood vessel’s flexibility. This means that when a person’s heart is working the hardest — due to exertion, heat, stress or any reason — their blood pressure will increase more because the blood vessel is unable to compensate for the increased load, which can trigger a cardiac event like a heart attack.

In this study, the researchers analyzed data originally collected from 786 participants in the Habitual Diet and Avocado Trial, a six-month study of adults 25 years and older. Men were eligible for the study if they had a waist circumference greater than 40 inches, and women were eligible if they had a waist circumference greater than 35 inches.

Half of the participants were instructed to maintain their normal diet and activity. The other half were provided with one avocado to consume each day and were instructed to maintain their normal diet and activity.

Researchers in the Habitual Diet and Avocado Trial found that adding avocado to the diets of people with obesity did not change weight or waist circumference, but that it could reduce levels of LDL cholesterol.

In the current study, the researchers compared blood samples taken at the beginning and end of the study. Over the course of the study, levels of LDL particles in the avocado-per-day group decreased by 49 nanomoles per liter, which corresponds to an approximate 4% reduction in heart disease risk, the researchers said.

"Four percent is a modest reduction compared with the 14–29% lower heart disease risk associated with improving the overall diet,” Damani said. “However, it is a step in the right direction."

Additionally, regardless of study participants’ sex, race, ethnicity, age or body mass index, they were equally likely to experience improvement in the LDL particle levels. This indicates that anyone with obesity could benefit from avocado consumption, the researchers explained, with the added caution that people should speak to a registered dietitian nutritionist or their physician for personalized, expert guidance on improving their diets.

“Penn State researchers demonstrated several years ago that avocado consumption could reduce LDL cholesterol and levels of LDL particles,” said Kristina Petersen, associate professor of nutritional sciences and senior author of this study. “But in that study, the researchers controlled participants’ entire diets throughout the experiment. This study demonstrated benefits in the real world, where people’s diets are much less predictable. In the course of people’s normal lives, avocado consumption still contributes to a healthier diet.”

Penny Kris Etherton, retired Evan Pugh University Professor of Nutritional Sciences at Penn State, also contributed to this research.

Other co-authors of the study include Nirupa Matthan of the Jean Mayer USDA Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging at Tufts University; Zhaoping Li of the David Geffen School of Medicine at University of California, Los Angeles; Joan Sabaté of the School of Public Health at Loma Linda University; and David Reboussin of the Wake Forest University School of Medicine.

The Avocado Nutrition Center supported this research.

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Journal

Journal of Clinical Lipidology

DOI

10.1016/j.jacl.2026.06.005 

Night owls are at greater risk of poor metabolic health

Whether you are an early bird or a night owl, your sleep patterns can tell a lot about a person’s eating habits and subsequently the potential health risks.

Professor Rozanne Kruger from Griffith University’s School of Allied Health, Sport and Social Work studied 287 European and Pacific New Zealand women aged between 18-45 years and assessed if they were morning chronotypes (early bird) or an evening chronotype (night owl).

“Chronotypes influences our preferences for food intake, our behaviours and our metabolism,” Professor Kruger said.

“Both Morning-types and Evening-types consumed similar amounts of food or energy across the day, but it was the timing of eating that was crucial.”

Evening-types consumed less food between 3am and 9:59am but more food between 8pm and 2:59am, while the opposite was true for Morning-types.

Night owls were more likely to consume lower energy and protein intakes in the morning, and ate foods that were high in energy, carbohydrates and fats late at night.

This Evening-type eating and sleeping pattern was associated with greater body fat percentage, belly fat, and higher blood sugar and lipids.

Consuming food at night, when we are supposed to be fasting and sleeping, means we store more food rather than use it, which may increase susceptibility to obesity and cause worse health outcomes.

Women who naturally preferred a later bedtime and wake time were also more likely to have a higher Body Mass Index and Body Fat percentage, poorer lipid profiles, and less favourable indicators of glucose regulation than Morning-types.

“The research highlights that when people eat may be just as important as what they eat,” Professor Kruger said.

“Targeting meal timing, particularly reducing late-night eating, could be an important strategy for improving health amongst people with an evening chronotype.

“It reinforces the role of chrononutrition and the role it plays in obesity and metabolic disease prevention.”

The paper ‘Chronotype and associations with dietary intake, meal timing, body composition, and metabolic biomarkers’ has been published in Frontiers in Nutrition.

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Journal

Frontiers in Nutrition

DOI

10.3389/fnut.2026.1862060 

Muscles matter for diabetes risk

 A major new international study led by Curtin University, has found diabetes risk is about more than just body weight or obesity, revealing muscle health also likely plays a big role in whether people will develop the condition.

 

Published in one of the world’s leading diabetes journals, Diabetes Care, the study saw researchers from the Curtin School of Population Health and Dementia Centre of Excellence at the Curtin enAble Institute analyse health data from nearly 480,000 adults over 14 years - all of whom were diabetes-free at the beginning of the study.

 

The team found people with both excess body fat and poor muscle health – a condition known as sarcopenic obesity - were more than three-and-a-half times as likely to develop type 2 diabetes than people with healthy body composition.

 

It also found people with sarcopenic obesity were 19 per cent more likely to develop type 2 diabetes than people with obesity alone and 91 per cent more likely to develop type 2 diabetes than people with low muscle mass and strength (sarcopenia) alone.

 

Lead author and PhD candidate Zhongyang Guan said the findings challenge the common perception diabetes risk is primarily driven by body weight.

 

"Most people know carrying excess weight can increase the risk of type 2 diabetes, but our findings show muscle health is also an important piece of the puzzle," Mr Guan said.

 

"People with both excess body fat and low muscle mass had a substantially higher risk of developing type 2 diabetes than those with obesity alone.

 

"This suggests we need to look beyond the number on the scales when assessing diabetes risk, as maintaining muscle strength and muscle mass may be just as important as managing body weight."

 

The study found nearly 15 per cent of people with sarcopenic obesity developed type 2 diabetes within 10 years, compared with around 11 per cent of people with obesity alone and just 3 per cent of people without sarcopenia or obesity.

 

The link was particularly strong among women and adults under the age of 60.

 

Project senior lead Professor Mario Siervo said the results supported a broader approach to diabetes prevention.

 

"Healthcare professionals routinely monitor body weight and obesity, but our findings suggest assessing muscle health could help identify people at high risk earlier," Professor Siervo said.

 

"As populations age and rates of obesity continue to rise, preserving muscle health through regular physical activity and healthy lifestyle habits could play an important role in reducing the burden of type 2 diabetes."

 

Diabetes WA Clinical Services Manager Jessica Weiss said the findings highlighted the important role muscle plays in controlling blood sugar levels and reflected what health practitioners were seeing firsthand.

 

"We know our muscles use a lot of our glucose for fuel and working them during physical activity is a great way to help use up glucose from our blood and regulate glucose levels,” Ms Weiss said.

 

“Physical activity also reduces our body's resistance to insulin, an important element to type 2 diabetes.

 

“The more muscle we have and the more regularly we use them, the better equipped our body is to prevent or manage type 2 diabetes.”

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Journal

Diabetes Care

DOI

10.2337/dc26-0797 

Acupuncture to the ear may help to lessen pain from migraines

 Acupuncture to the ear may help to lessen pain from migraines and their impact on daily life, according to new research presented today (Friday) at the Federation of European Neuroscience Societies (FENS) Forum 2026 [1].

A randomised clinical trial of the treatment, called auriculotherapy, found that migraines were less painful immediately after the treatment and 30 days later, compared with the pain experienced before treatment. The impact of migraines on daily life also improved.

In addition, the researchers, led by Fernanda Belle, a physiotherapist in the Experimental Neuroscience laboratory at the University of Southern Santa Catarina (UNISUL), Palhoça, Brazil, observed changes in oxygenation levels in the prefrontal cortex of the brain over the course of the study, as measured by hemoencephalography (HEG®), which is a non-invasive technology using near-infrared spectroscopy to measure blood flow in the brain, and is an indirect measure of neural activity.

However, although these were all statistically significant improvements when comparing the 68 women in the trial before and after the treatment, there was no statistically significant difference between the 34 women receiving auriculotherapy and the 34 who received the sham treatment.

Ms Belle said: “Both groups improved over time, which may suggest that auricular stimulation, even when non-specific, can influence pain-related outcomes. However, at this stage, we cannot conclude that auriculotherapy was superior to the sham procedure.

“In the HEG® assessment, we identified changes in the average oxygenation levels of the prefrontal cortex over the course of the study, as well as differences between the groups, but the pattern of change over time was not clearly distinct between the two groups. However, the results are important because they show that it is possible to objectively monitor aspects of brain function in women with chronic migraine.

“Overall, these results are encouraging, especially because we observed improvement in clinical outcomes during follow-up, with a more consistent effect on pain in the group that received auriculotherapy. This suggests that auriculotherapy may be an interesting complementary strategy in the care of chronic migraine. We are reassessing these preliminary results in a larger group of women.”

Ms Belle has personal experience of migraines as she and members of her family suffer from them. So she wanted to explore options for improving the care for other people facing the same problem.

“Migraine is a highly prevalent and disabling condition, and many patients do not achieve adequate symptom control with conventional treatments alone. It also affects women approximately three times more often than men, probably due in part to hormonal influences, and it represents an important cause of disability,” she said.

Ms Belle recruited 68 women to her study who had had a clinical diagnosis of migraine for at least one year. All the patients experienced migraines on 15 or more days a month. Migraines were characterised by recurrent moderate to severe headaches, accompanied by other symptoms such as nausea, sensitivity to light and sound, and sometimes aura – a neurological symptom that can include visual disturbances such as flashing lights or zigzag lines.

The researchers assessed pain via the McGill Pain Questionnaire, and the impact on daily life using the Headache Impact Test (HIT-6) at three time points: before the patients started treatment, immediately after the treatment, and 30 days later.

The patients were randomly assigned to receive eight sessions of auriculotherapy or the sham treatment over eight weeks. Auriculotherapy involved the use of semi-permanent needles to stimulate specific points on the ear selected according to the protocol for migraine. Afterwards, mustard seeds were applied to the same points to maintain the stimulation until the next session. The sham procedure involved the application of semi-permanent needles to ear points that were not related to migraine, but corresponded to the fingers, wrist, knee, arm, shoulder, lung, lower limbs and spine. Mustard seeds were also applied to these points.

Patients did not know which procedure they were having, the therapist did, but the outcome assessors and those conducting the statistical analysis were blinded as to which group the women had been allocated. The researchers carried out physiological assessments in the brain using HEG®, which involves having small sensors attached to the patients’ heads to measure blood flow and oxygenation.

In the auriculotherapy group, the average pain score decreased from 50.5 before the sessions, to 44.7 immediately after the sessions, and to 41 after 30 days. This represented a reduction in pain of approximately 11% at the end of the treatment and 18% at the 30-day follow-up.

In the group receiving the sham procedure, the pain scores also decreased from 50.2 before the sessions to 44.3 immediately after the sessions and to 43.9 after 30 days, representing reductions of approximately 12% and 13%, respectively. At the 30-day follow-up, pain scores were significantly lower than before treatment in both groups. However, there was no statistically significant difference between the groups, meaning that the study could not show that auriculotherapy was superior to the sham procedure.

“We also observed a reduction in the impact of migraine on daily life,” said Ms Belle. “In the auriculotherapy group, the average HIT-6 score decreased from 66.1 before the sessions to 60.7 immediately after the sessions and to 59.5 at 30 days. In the sham group, the average score decreased from 65.8 to 59.2 after the sessions and was 59.3 at 30 days. Across both groups, this represents reductions of approximately 8% to 10%.

“Both groups improved over time, which may suggest that auricular stimulation, even when non-specific, can influence pain-related outcomes. However, at this stage, we cannot conclude that the auriculotherapy protocol was superior to the sham procedure. As this is a preliminary analysis from an ongoing study, the findings should be interpreted with caution and will be reassessed in a larger sample.”

In addition to studying auriculotherapy in a larger group of women, Ms Belle and her colleagues are also investigating the mechanisms that may explain how auriculotherapy acts in the body.

“Migraine is a complex condition involving neurovascular, autonomic and neuroinflammatory changes. The ear has strong links to networks of nerve cells, including connections with the vagus nerve, the trigeminal nerve and cervical nerves, which are involved in pain regulation, autonomic activity and inflammatory responses,” she said. “One of our hypotheses is that auriculotherapy may influence the so-called neuroimmune axis – a two-way communication system between the nervous and immune systems, modulating processes related to pain sensitisation and inflammation.”

Professor Christina Dalla from the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece, is chair of the FENS Forum communication committee and was not involved in the research. she said: “Migraine is a debilitating condition that can have a major impact on people’s lives, especially women’s lives. Well-conducted, randomised controlled trials of the condition are rare so, as a neuropsychopharmacologist, I am pleased that this study is being presented at the FENS Forum, as it has a rigorous methodology and careful assessment of the participants throughout the follow-up period. I look forward to seeing the results of auriculotherapy in a larger number of participants. It is important to emphasise that this a potential treatment that is complementary to existing migraine therapies, and not a replacement for them.”

Sniffing chocolate could make your workout easier

“Exposing moderately trained men to chocolate odors right before and between sets of resistance exercise significantly increased their overall training volume without increasing their perceived exertion,” said senior author Dr Mohamed Nashrudin bin Naharudin, an assistant professor at the Faculty of Sports and Exercise Science at the University of Malaya. “Seeing a substantial increase in repetitions without the athletes feeling like they were exerting themselves any harder is a fascinating psychobiological outcome.”

Whiff of cocoa

The participant sample consisted of 23 healthy, moderately trained men in their early to mid-20s. Divided in three groups, they were provided one of three odor samples: liquified dark chocolate containing 90% cocoa, liquified milk chocolate containing 60% cocoa, or a water sample serving as a control.

“We know olfaction is powerfully wired into the brain’s appetite and emotion networks, but surprisingly, no study has systematically looked at the three-way interaction between smell, appetite, and actual resistance exercise capacity,” said Nashrudin Naharudin.

Participants had not eaten for at least 10 hours before performing leg extensions, a resistance training exercise that’s performed by sitting down and extending the lower legs to lift a weight upwards. Leg extension performance was assessed before and during their training. Hunger, fullness, desire to eat, and plans to eat in the near future were reported before the leg workout. During the sets only hunger and desire to eat were measured, each after 30 seconds of exposure to a scent sample.

These measurements showed that both chocolate types had clear but different effects on appetite related measures. Relative to the water control and milk chocolate samples, sniffing dark chocolate consistently led to participants reporting less hunger, reduced desire and intention to eat, and greater fullness before exercise. This smell predominantly suppressed appetite by reducing hunger and increasing fullness. In contrast, those smelling the milk chocolate sample reported higher odor pleasantness compared to dark chocolate and water samples, but no changes in hunger or appetite.

Smelling chocolate samples affected not only appetite-related measures, but also performance.

“Sniffing a 90% dark chocolate odor added about 18 more repetitions to participants’ leg extensions, while a 60% milk chocolate odor added about nine repetitions compared to the water control,” said Nashrudin Naharudin.

Ready, steady, eat

The researchers think these changes in appetite perception could be related to what we learn about smells from a young age. Learned cues, such as foods we’ve eaten before, generate expectations about what happens after eating and can cause a shift from hunger toward perceived fullness.

“The dark chocolate scent serves as a learned cue for a rich, bitter, and highly satiating food, which essentially tricks the system into an anticipatory state of fullness,” said Nashrudin Naharudin. “Conversely, the sweeter milk chocolate scent acts more like a hedonic reward cue, enhancing training volume by creating a highly pleasant sensory environment rather than by shifting basic metabolic hunger signals.”

These effects suggest that anticipation of food could have similar effects to its actual consumption, particularly because they’re observable when people haven’t eaten. Food scents might kickstart the digestive process or trigger changes in body and mind that occur in anticipation of a meal. These changes closely mimic some of the psychological and physiological shifts typically brought on by actual eating.

The authors pointed out that their claims remain inferential, as no blood hormones or neural pathways were measured. Additionally, there may have been slight variations in smell intensity between the chocolate samples, and the water sample was odorless, which could have given participants clues about whether they were part of the control group. Finally, more diverse participant samples are needed to confirm these findings.

This leads to the question of whether chocolate is the only food that can trigger such responses.

“We don’t think chocolate is entirely unique, though it is a food cue with incredibly strong, universally recognized reward associations,” Nashrudin Naharudin concluded. Although this hasn’t been tested yet, other foods strongly linked to satiety could show similar effects. “A person likely needs to find the odor familiar and appealing – or at least not repulsive – to trigger the psychological shift in appetite that’s needed to see a performance boost.”

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Robust evidence supports paracetamol’s (acetaminophen - Tylenol) safety during pregnancy

 Researchers from the LKS Faculty of Medicine at the University of Hong Kong (HKUMed) have found that using a commonly used pain killer (paracetamol or acetaminophen) during pregnancy does not increase the risk of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) or attention‑deficit/ hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in children. This represents the first study in Hong Kong to apply a rigorous sibling-matched approach to compare siblings from the same mother to effectively account for shared genetic and environmental influences. The findings, published in JAMA Internal Medicine [link to the publication], offer timely reassurance for expectant mothers and clinicians in Hong Kong and globally regarding the safety of paracetamol use during pregnancy.

Addressing global anxiety: the paracetamol debate
Paracetamol is the most widely used medication for pain and fever during pregnancy. However, concerns about its potential association with ASD and ADHD have intensified following overseas reports and policy discussions. While international health authorities, including the World Health Organization and the Department of Health in Hong Kong, have reaffirmed its safety profile, robust local evidence was previously lacking – a gap that this study has now filled.

Sibling-matched analysis accounts for shared familial factors
Some previous studies suggested a modest increase in ASD and ADHD risk in offspring but did not fully account for differences between mothers who did and did not use paracetamol, such as underlying health status, lifestyle or familial factors. To address these methodological limitations, the HKUMed team analysed electronic medical records from 708,020 mother–child pairs in Hong Kong between 2000 and 2023, allowing a more comprehensive and accurate assessment.

Initial analyses without sibling matching reproduced earlier findings of a slight increase in risk. However, when the researchers applied a sibling-matched design—comparing siblings exposed and unexposed to paracetamol during mothers’ pregnancy—no association was observed between prenatal paracetamol exposure and the risk of ASD or ADHD in their offspring. These findings remained consistent regardless of dosage, timing of exposure (across all trimesters), and pattern of use (sporadic, intermittent or persistent).

Robust evidence supports paracetamol’s safety during pregnancy
Dr April Luo Shan, Research Assistant Professor in the Department of Family Medicine and Primary Care, School of Clinical Medicine, HKUMed, said: ‘I had herpes zoster during my pregnancy, but I did not take paracetamol at that time because of concerns raised in the media. As both a researcher and a mother, I deeply understand the anxiety many women face. Our study provides the reassurance I wish I had and would have helped me manage the pain I was experiencing.’

Professor Peter Tanuseputro, Clinical Professor in the same department, added, ‘Previous conflicting studies generated doubt and unnecessary stress for expectant parents, leading many mothers to endure untreated pain or resort to other medications that may be less safe. Our sibling-matched study within a massive Chinese cohort provides robust evidence that paracetamol is safe during pregnancy.’

Professor Ian Wong Chi-kei, Professor in the Department of Pharmacology and Pharmacy, HKUMed, added. ‘Monitoring the long-term outcomes of children with in-utero drug exposure requires an incredibly robust data infrastructure. Thanks to the Laboratory of Data Discovery for Health (D24H) at AIR@InnoHK, the Research Grants Council and Hospital Authority, we were able to rapidly address this urgent drug safety question with the necessary precision and scale.’