A large Swedish study suggests that some high-fat dairy products are associated with a lower risk of dementia.
Swedish researchers used data from the Malmö Diet and Cancer Cohort, which included 27,670 adults aged 45 to 73 living in Malmö, Sweden.
The team then conducted interviews, collected food diaries, and administered questionnaires to patients to calculate how much of each dairy product people consumed each day. They also classified dairy products into high-fat and low-fat types. High-fat cheese is defined as 20% or more fat, and high-fat cream is defined as 30% or more fat.
Participants took part in the study from 1991 to 1996 and were followed for an average of 25 years.
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The main results they considered were: Dementia from any causeOn the other hand, Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and vascular dementia (VaD) were studied separately. During the follow-up period, 3,208 people developed dementia. Within these groups, those who consumed high-fat cheese were significantly less likely to develop dementia.
“We were a little surprised to see a lower risk of dementia among people who ate more high-fat cheese,” Emily Sonnestedt, associate professor of nutritional epidemiology at Sweden’s Lund University, told Fox News Digital.
At the same time, she says it’s not entirely unexpected to see an association with vascular dementia.
“Many cases of dementia involve damage to small blood vessels in the brain. Our own previous research, as well as several international studies, including from the United States, have shown a neutral or slightly protective association between cheese and cardiovascular disease.”
The study controlled for factors such as age, gender, education, smoking, physical activity, alcohol intake, BMI, high blood pressure, overall diet quality, and other dairy products.
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Those who consumed at least 50 grams per day high fat cheese The risk of all-cause dementia was lower than those who ate less than 15 grams per day. They also had a lower risk of vascular dementia.
High-fat creams showed a similar pattern, with those who consumed at least 20 grams per day having a 16% lower risk of all-cause dementia than those who did not.
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Other dairy products showed no clear association with overall dementia risk. Low-fat cheese, low-fat cream, cow’s milk, fermented milk, and butter were generally not associated with all-cause dementia.
One exception is that high butter intake (at least 40 grams per day) is associated with an increased risk of Alzheimer’s disease. The study also found that high-fat cheese was associated with a lower risk of Alzheimer’s disease only in people who did not have the APOE epsilon 4 risk variant, a genetic variation associated with Alzheimer’s disease.
Because this is an observational study, it cannot show cause and effect, and unmeasured factors may still be at play.
“This study was conducted in Sweden, where people primarily eat hard fermented cheese, so the results may not be directly applicable to countries where cheese types and dietary patterns vary widely,” Sonnestedt said.
Diet was measured only once, so changes over time could not be fully captured. Cream intake It was measured with less precision than cheese.
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“Although we took into account and adjusted for many lifestyle and health factors, it is still difficult to say that cheese itself is protective. Cheese is likely part of a broader dietary pattern and lifestyle that may support long-term brain health,” the researchers noted.
Dementia diagnoses after 2014 were not verified in detail, and baseline cognitive status was not available.
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Some dementia cases may have been missed, and the results were obtained from a Swedish population, which may limit generalizability.
The results of this study were published in the American Academy of Neurology’s medical journal Neurology.
