This research ties the Dietary Inflammatory Index with a reduction in brain size.
The Dietary Inflammatory Index overview:
The above article links to a detailed pdf on what foods and lifestyle contribute to the dietary inflammatory scores (DIS) and the lifestyle inflammatory scores (LIS)
Here are some examples of contributors to the index from the pdf:
and the association of the index with hsCRP:
You can see the large rise of hsCRP with quintiles of DIS and LIS.
Hippocrates “Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food”
We are all given a set of genes (hardware), but what we do with these genes (software) is the epigenetic trajectory of longevity (barring any morality reducing causative genes)
Sadly, approx 30-50% at age 62 yr old already had comorbidities…cancer/heart disease/diabetes/CKD.
The worst scoring diet item was refined grains and starchy vegetables. A listing for whole grain products was notably absent.
Here is there reason for no whole grain rating: the questionnaire was inadequate.
We eliminated food groups … if measurement was inadequate using the Block 98 FFQ (whole grains).
They put sweet potatos/yams in the highest pro-inflammatory food group?!? Sorry but that’s just idiotic. I need more time to read how they came up with the list. If it’s based on food frequency questionnaires then that’s a huge red flag to begin with. I’m not saying it’s all wrong, but I’m not ready to accept this list at face value just yet.
The brain volume connection is what makes this research hard to ignore. Most people think of inflammatory foods as a heart or gut issue — the neurological impact doesn’t get nearly enough attention.
The DIS framework is useful, but the sweet potato classification raised a fair point. Lumping nutrient-dense foods with processed carbs because of a questionnaire limitation undermines the index’s credibility a bit.
That said, the hsCRP trend across quintiles is pretty clear. You don’t need a perfect index to see that chronic dietary inflammation is doing real damage over time.
The Hippocrates quote above still holds — food is either medicine or slow poison, and most people are choosing the latter without realizing it.
