Fresh fruit can be a ‘super-shield’ against dementia and depression: its regular intake in high quantities, in fact, protects the areas of the brain involved in the development of both pathologies. This is indicated by the study led by the Italian researcher Santino Gaudio, of the Swedish University of Uppsala, and published in the journal NeuroImage. Based on the results obtained, the authors therefore invite national institutions to evaluate an information campaign that encourages the population to consume more fruit.
The researchers took into consideration a large sample of over 9,900 people, whose data is kept by the British database UK Biobank: they were thus able to evaluate the correlation between the quantity of fresh fruit consumed and the volume of gray matter, that part of tissue brain composed mainly of neurons, as opposed to the white matter which is instead made up of extensions of the neurons that conduct nervous impulses.
The results highlighted that the more the quantity of fruit increases, the more the volume of gray matter also increases in different areas of the brain: in particular in the hippocampus, which plays a fundamental role in memory processes and in the development of dementia and depression.
In other words, a greater intake of fresh fruit seems to protect the brain from the reduction in gray matter that occurs both in people suffering from dementia and in those affected by depression, and thus avoids the onset of these diseases.
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