The next time you go bananas over, well, bananas, don’t bite off more than you can chew. The fruit is a rich source of magnesium and we are now discovering that maintaining the right levels of the mineral in one’s body can keep dementia at bay. It’s tricky. Scientists at the Erasmus University Medical Center in the Netherlands have found that both high and low serum magnesium levels can raise the risk of developing dementia. They conducted a study, where they measured serum magnesium levels in over 9,500 participants, aged an average of 65 years. None of the participants had dementia between 1997 and 2008. During the next 10 years that they were clinically followed, 823 participants developed dementia, 662 of them Alzheimer’s disease. After adjusting for various factors, researchers found that participants in the group who exhibited both low and high serum magnesium levels showed a 30 per cent chance of developing dementia over those whose levels were normal. The study was published in journal Neurology.

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Featured in Harmony — Celebrate Age Magazine
December 2017