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"Highway to Health: A Study Overview"

What Chronic Diseases the MIND Diet Also Protects Against

The MIND diet emphasizes healthy fats, such as those from nuts, berries, whole grains, as well as fish and poultry.
The MIND diet emphasizes healthy fats from sources such as nuts, berries, whole grains, fish, and poultry. This approach aims to prevent chronic diseases like dementia. Photo: Getty Images, Wolf Lux; Collage: FITBOOK
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Editor-in-Chief

December 22, 2025, 3:16 pm | Read time: 2 minutes

The MIND diet combines elements of the Mediterranean diet and the DASH diet with the goal of maintaining cognitive health and preventing dementia and cardiovascular diseases. However, a study sought to determine if there are additional health effects.

What was examined? The review published in “Nutrients” evaluated 47 studies from ten countries, published between 2015 and 2024, to investigate how the MIND diet affects overall health.1 The diet combines the Mediterranean and DASH diets and emphasizes plant-based foods, healthy fats, and antioxidant nutrients.

The researchers specifically looked beyond the known applications, such as dementia and cardiovascular diseases. Almost all the studies were observational, with an average of about 7,800 participants.

Results: In 65 percent of the tested associations, high adherence to the MIND diet was linked to numerous health benefits. In some cases, there was a significantly lower likelihood of:

  • premature mortality (reduced by up to 37 percent)
  • Type 2 diabetes (about 25 percent less)
  • breast cancer in women (50 percent less)
  • Parkinson’s (later onset, milder course)
  • multiple sclerosis (95 percent lower likelihood in a case-control study)

Additionally, there were indications of:

  • better muscle strength and mobility
  • fewer daily limitations (57 percent less)
  • improved values in fatty liver, sleep quality, and quality of life

In about one-third of the studies, there were no significant associations—mainly with mental health issues such as depression or stress. Only one unfavorable result was identified: A study found increased cadmium levels in urine with high adherence to the MIND diet, which could be due to plant-based foods.

Significance: The MIND diet could contribute to the prevention of many chronic diseases beyond brain protection. However, the authors emphasize that many results are based on observational data, and intervention studies are needed to confirm causality.

Found an error? Please send feedback to: highway2health@fitbook.de.

This article is a machine translation of the original German version of FITBOOK and has been reviewed for accuracy and quality by a native speaker. For feedback, please contact us at info@fitbook.de.

Sources

  1. Morgan KH, Lee ML, Barroso CS, Anderson JG, Lott S, Reth D, Horn C, Dixson M. Associations of the MIND Diet with Human Health Outcomes: A Scoping Review. Nutrients. 2025 Aug 20;17(16):2687. doi: 10.3390/nu17162687. PMID: 40871715; PMCID: PMC12389411. ↩︎
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