The Effects of Dietary Interventions on Brain Aging and Neurological Diseases

Abstract

Dietary interventions can ameliorate age-related neurological decline. Decades of research of in vitro studies, animal models, and clinical trials support their ability and efficacy to improve behavioral outcomes by inducing biochemical and physiological changes that lead to a more resilient brain. Dietary interventions including calorie restriction, alternate day fasting, time restricted feeding, and fasting mimicking diets not only improve normal brain aging but also slow down, or even reverse, the progression of neurological diseases. In this review, we focus on the effects of intermittent and periodic fasting on improving phenotypic outcomes, such as cognitive and motor-coordination decline, in the normal aging brain through an increase in neurogenesis and synaptic plasticity, and decrease in neuroinflammation, mitochondrial dysfunction, and oxidative stress. We summarize the results of various dietary interventions in animal models of age-related neurological diseases such as Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, epilepsy, and Multiple Sclerosis and discuss the results of clinical trials that explore the feasibility of dietary interventions in the prevention and treatment of these diseases.

Mitochondria: It is all about energy

“…4.1 Nutritional strategies: Fasting, phytochemicals, phytomelatonin, and fermented food 4.1.1 Fasting Fasting is an effective way to recover mitochondrial efficiency, and multiple human studies have shown its ability to restore metabolic pathways in people suffering from chronic pathologies. Fasting regimens are promising primary and secondary prevention strategies in patients suffering from metabolic and cardiovascular diseases (Oliveira et al, 2022;Papakonstantinou et al, 2022;Vasim et al, 2022;Zang et al, 2022), pain, inflammation and immune conditions (Feng et al, 2022;Fitzgerald et al, 2022;Parveen and Alhazmi, 2022), cancer (Lv et al, 2014;Marinac et al, 2016;Taucher et al, 2022;Tiwari et al, 2022), and neurological diseases characterized by altered mood, sleep, pain, and cognition (Phillips, 2019;Brocchi et al, 2022;Caron et al, 2022;Feng et al, 2022;Lobo et al, 2022;Xu et al, 2022).…”

Ketogenic Diet Is a Non-Drug Method of Treating Epilepsy

“…КД может успешно применяться для компенсации течения группы тяжелых неврологических заболеваний [9,10] и рекомендована детям в качестве альтернативного способа лечения любой формы эпилепсии при неэффективности традиционно применяемых противоэпилептических препаратов (уровень убедительности рекомендаций А, уровень достоверности доказательств -1) [11].…”

“…По определению, традиционная КД -низкоуглеводная диета с высоким содержанием жиров и умеренным содержанием белков, направленная на замену глюкозы кетоновыми телами (КТ) [7][8][9][10]12]. Так называемая модель VLCKD -КД с очень низким содержанием углеводов.…”

Choline supplementation in early life improves and low levels of choline can impair outcomes in a mouse model of Alzheimer’s disease

“…In Alzheimer's disease (AD), changes to the diet have been recommended (Bourre 2006;Power et al 2019;Mao et al 2021;Lobo et al 2022), including MCS (Strupp et al 2016;Velazquez et al 2020;Dave et al 2023;Judd et al 2023a;. One reason for the recommendation is that serum levels of choline are low in individuals with AD (Dave et al 2023;Judd et al 2023b).…”

“…In Alzheimer's disease (AD), changes to the diet have been recommended (Bourre, 2006;Power et al, 2019;Mao et al, 2021;Lobo et al, 2022), including MCS (Strupp et al, 2016;Velazquez et al, 2020). The recommendation to use MCS is based primarily on data from the Ts65Dn mouse model of Down syndrome (DS) and AD, where MCS led to improved memory and attention in Ts65Dn offspring (Strupp et al, 2016;Powers et al, 2017;Powers et al, 2021).…”