champignons in a basket on dark boards, food (iStock)
A diet rich in mushrooms may help stave off dementia, new research suggests.
A study of 11 types of fungi found they boosted the brain’s gray matter by raising the production of a chemical called nerve growth factor, or NGF, according to the study, which appeared in the January edition of the Journal of Medicinal Food.
The findings suggest that mushrooms “may fulfill a preventive function against the development of Alzheimer’s disease.”
“Regular consumption of the mushrooms may reduce or delay development of age-related neurodegeneration,” Professor Vikineswary Sabaratnam of Malaya University in Kuala Lumpur concluded in the study.
“However, extensive animal and human clinical trials are warranted, which may then lead to designing functional food or novel therapeutic drugs to prevent or mitigate the effects of neuro-degenerative diseases,” he added.
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