People with fewer and less-diverse gut microbes are more likely to have cognitive impairment, including dementia and Alzheimer’s. Consuming fresh fruit and engaging in regular exercise help promote the growth of gut microbiota, which may protect against cognitive impairment.

I’ve linked to the news release in the post above. In this comment, for those interested, here’s the link to the peer reviewed journal article:

https://content.iospress.com/articles/journal-of-alzheimers-disease/jad240597

From the linked article:

KEY POINTS

– Fruits provide fiber for a healthy and diverse microbiome.

– Exercise also improves your microbiome.

– A healthy microbiome may help prevent cognitive impairment.

People with fewer and less-diverse gut microbes are more likely to have cognitive impairment, including dementia and Alzheimer’s. That’s according to a new study from a collaboration between Monash University of Australia and Jinan University of China.

Lead author Lei Zhang says, “Our findings reveal that consuming fresh fruit and engaging in regular exercise help promote the growth of gut microbiota, which is beneficial for cognitive function and can protect against cognitive impairment.”

>it showed causality, a rarity in human studies.

I’m sure the gut microbiome probably has some effect, but I’m not too sure if this study shows causality.

>They asked a group of their subjects to get more fruit and exercise into their lives and found that the richness of microbes in their gut improved.

We have lots of reasons to think that exercise is beneficial for the brain through many mechanisms that don’t involve the gut. So to me I don’t see how they get passed just correlation.

I can’t read the full study, but from the abstract it just looks like a correlational thing.

>Conclusions: We identified a significantly reduced abundance of certain beneficial gut microbiota in older Chinese adults with cognitive impairment.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/39213074/