A team of medical researchers from the Universidad de Las Américas in Ecuador, the Instituto de Investigación Sanitaria de Navarra in Pamplona, Spain, and the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health in the United States have found evidence suggesting that children and adolescents derive similar health benefits as adults from following the Mediterranean diet.
The benefits of the Mediterranean diet in children and adolescents
For their article published on JAMA Open Network the group analyzed data from nine randomized, controlled clinical trials involving the study of diet in children.
Previous trials have shown that people who switch from a traditional Western diet to a Mediterranean diet typically experience weight loss, a reduced risk of cardiovascular disease, and reductions in blood sugar levels, blood pressure, and cholesterol.
For this new study, the research team asked whether children and adolescents would experience the same benefits. They conducted a meta-analysis of randomized clinical trial data from studies that focused on the impact of eating habits in children and adolescents.
The data came from nine clinical trials involving a total of 577 children with an average age of 11 years. About 60 percent of the volunteers were girls. Six of the studies looked at the eating habits of overweight children, and one looked at children diagnosed with prediabetes.
The other two studies involved children who were neither overweight nor diabetic and therefore served as the control group for this new study. All children in all nine studies were asked to follow a Mediterranean diet for a period of time.
The research team found that children who followed the Mediterranean diet for at least eight weeks experienced improvements in blood pressure, triglycerides, total cholesterol, and LDL cholesterol levels, and also experienced increases in high-density lipoprotein cholesterol.
The team was surprised to find, however, that the diet did not lead to improvements in insulin resistance or glucose metabolism. The researchers suggest that it may take longer for such changes to be seen with the diet. They conclude that the Mediterranean diet would be a healthy choice for most children and adolescents.
Mediterranean diet may help people with irritable bowel symptoms
A study examining the benefits of the Mediterranean diet for people with irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) has produced surprising results.
The diet rich in fruits, vegetables and legumes not only improved the mental health of the study participants, but their gastrointestinal symptoms also improved.
Dr Heidi Staudacher, a National Health and Medical Research Council Emerging Leadership Fellow at Deakin University’s Food & Mood Centre, said it was common for people with irritable bowel syndrome to avoid some key foods in the Mediterranean diet, as they were known to trigger worsening symptoms.
“We previously believed that foods like legumes, some whole grains and onions could make gut symptoms worse in some people,” Dr. Staudacher said.
“This research suggests that there may be a new way to help reduce the burden of irritable bowel syndrome symptoms that doesn’t focus on eliminating foods known to be important for good health.”
Dr. Staudacher’s research, published in Alimentary Pharmacology & Therapeutics, measured the outcomes of 59 people over a six-week period, who either followed the Mediterranean diet under the advice of a dietitian or ate their usual diet (control group).
“Previous research has shown that the Mediterranean diet improves depressive symptoms, and we wanted to see if this type of diet was applicable to people with irritable bowel syndrome and whether it would improve both depressive and bowel symptoms in people with irritable bowel syndrome,” said Dr. Staudacher.
“Many people with IBS also have mental health issues such as anxiety and depression. Given the known gut-brain connection, it’s plausible that if we can improve people’s mental health, this could lead to improvements in the gut symptoms that people with IBS live with.”
The study found:
•83% of the Mediterranean diet participants had a reduction in their IBS-SSS (bowel symptom severity score) score during the trial compared to only 37% in the control group.
•Depressive symptoms were lower in the Mediterranean diet compared to controls at the end of the study. This is consistent with other research using a Mediterranean diet in people with depression.
•Surprisingly, gastrointestinal symptoms were also lower in the Mediterranean diet group than in the control group.
“These findings suggest that we may be able to look beyond current dietary advice for people with IBS and encourage a broadly healthy diet to help them manage their symptoms. We now urgently need to conduct a larger study comparing a Mediterranean diet with a better control diet to give us more clarity on its effect on gut and psychological symptoms,” said Dr Staudacher.
“It will also be necessary to involve dietitians, to help people gradually increase foods rich in fiber and FODMAPs in their diet, to avoid triggering intestinal symptoms.”
Mediterranean diet improves symptoms of depression in young men
A new study shows that young men with a poor diet saw a significant improvement in depression symptoms when they switched to a healthy Mediterranean diet.
Depression is a common mental health condition that affects approximately 1 million Australians each year. It is a significant risk factor for suicide, the leading cause of death in young adults.
The 12-week randomized controlled trial, conducted by researchers at the University of Technology Sydney, was recently published in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.
Lead researcher Jessica Bayes, a PhD student in the UTS Faculty of Health, said the study was the first randomised clinical trial to assess the impact of a Mediterranean diet on symptoms of depression in young men (aged 18 to 25).
“We were surprised by how willing the young men were to adopt a new diet,” Bayes said. “Those assigned to the Mediterranean diet were able to significantly change their original diet, under the guidance of a nutritionist, in a short amount of time.”
“This suggests that clinicians and psychologists should consider referring depressed youth to a nutritionist or dietitian as an important component of treatment for clinical depression,” she said.
The study contributes to the emerging field of nutritional psychiatry, which aims to explore the effect that specific nutrients, foods, and eating patterns can have on mental health. The diet used in the study was rich in colorful vegetables, legumes, and whole grains, fatty fish, olive oil, and raw, unsalted nuts.
“The primary goal was to increase diet quality with fresh, whole foods, while reducing intake of fast foods, sugar, and processed red meat,” Bayes said.
“There are many scientific reasons why we think food affects mood. For example, about 90 percent of serotonin, a chemical that helps us feel happy, is produced in our gut by our gut microbes. There is emerging evidence that these microbes can communicate with the brain via the vagus nerve, in what is called the gut-brain axis.
“To have beneficial microbes, we need to feed them fiber, which is found in legumes, fruits and vegetables,” he said.
About 30 percent of depressed patients do not respond adequately to standard treatments for major depressive disorder, such as cognitive behavioral therapy and antidepressant medications.
“Nearly all of our participants continued on the program, and many were eager to continue the diet after the study ended, which shows how effective, tolerable and helpful they found the intervention,” Bayes said.
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