The Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension (DASH) diet is an eating pattern developed to prevent or lower high blood pressure without using medications. This diet promotes healthy eating by emphasizing the consumption of fruits, vegetables, whole grains, fish, nuts, seeds, lean meats and low-fat dairy products. The DASH diet also puts particular emphasis on reducing sodium intake as consuming too much of this mineral can increase blood pressure.

In a preliminary study presented at the American Academy of Neurology’s (AAN) 70th Annual Meeting in Los Angeles, researchers found that people who follow the DASH diet (or a diet similar to it) have a lower risk of depression than people who don’t. Meanwhile, they observed a higher risk for people who ate more foods associated with the Western diet.

According to Laurel Cherian, a doctor at the Rush University Medical Center in Chicago and one of the study authors, depression is common in older people, especially those with memory- and heart-related problems. But switching to a healthier diet is a much better solution to depression than taking medications. That’s why she and her team decided to find out how a healthy diet like the DASH diet can affect the risk of depression.

DASH diet benefits both heart and mental health

For their study, Cherian and her team recruited 964 participants with an average age of 81. They evaluated these participants annually for an average of six-and-a-half years. Besides using questionnaires to learn about how close the participants’ diets were to the DASH diet, the Mediterranean diet and the Western diet, the researchers also kept an eye out for depression symptoms.

The researchers found that those whose diets resembled the DASH diet more closely were less likely to develop depression than those who followed an unhealthy diet like the Western diet. In particular, they observed that the depression risk of people who ate more fruits, vegetables and whole grains was 11 percent lower than those who ate more foods rich in saturated fats, sugar and sodium.

Cherian noted, however, that their finding merely points to an association between the DASH diet and reduced depression risk. She said that it is not definitive proof.

“Future studies are now needed to confirm these results and to determine the best nutritional components of the DASH diet to prevent depression later in life and to best help people keep their brains healthy,” Cherian said in the AAN’s annual meeting.

Other health benefits of the DASH diet

The main objective of the DASH diet is to improve heart health and manage hypertension. Therefore, besides limiting sodium intake, it also requires an increase in the intake of calcium, magnesium and potassium. These minerals are involved in blood vessel functions that help lower blood pressure.

But despite having only one objective, the DASH diet offers plenty of other health benefits. These include:

• Lowering blood sugar levels
• Lowering blood triglyceride levels
• Lowering bad low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol levels
• Improving insulin resistance
• Reducing weight

All of these features that the DASH diet improves are linked to the metabolic syndrome. The metabolic syndrome is a cluster of conditions that increases a person’s risk of developing heart disease, stroke, obesity and Type 2 diabetes.

Besides these health problems, the DASH diet is also recommended for people who are at risk of colorectal cancer and those who suffer from kidney disease. According to the National Kidney Foundation (NKF), the DASH diet can not only reduce the risk of kidney stone formation, it can also slow the progression of kidney disease. However, the NKF doesn’t recommend this diet, or any other diet, to people on dialysis as these patients have special dietary requirements.

The DASH diet is a healthy and natural means of improving heart health. To learn about other diets that offer similar benefits, visit Fasting.news.

Sources:

MayoClinic.org 2

MayoClinic.org 2

Health.Harvard.edu

AAN.com

MedicalNewsToday.com

Kidney.org