Red meat may protect your brain as you age

Especially if you're carrying what's been called the "Alzheimer's gene."

At least, that's the finding of a 15-year Swedish study just published in JAMA Network Open.

Researchers tracked 2,157 adults and found that the people who ate the most unprocessed meat had dramatically lower rates of dementia…

And the protective effect was strongest in exactly the group conventional medicine says can't do much about their genetic risk.

This is mainstream peer-reviewed science.

The Swedish National Study on Aging and Care followed 2,157 adults aged 60 and older for up to 15 years. They tracked diet, genotype, and cognitive trajectories.

About 26% of the cohort carried at least one APOE ε4 allele (close to the general population rate).

ε4 carriers who ate the most unprocessed meat had 55% lower dementia risk than those who ate the least (sHR 0.45, 95% CI 0.21-0.95). Their cognitive trajectories over 15 years were measurably better, particularly in episodic memory, the cognitive domain early Alzheimer's affects most.

In non-carriers, meat intake didn't move the needle in either direction. The effect was specific to people carrying the "Alzheimer's gene."

And for the most shocking result:

At the lowest meat intake, ε4 carriers had about 2.5x the dementia risk of non-carriers.

At the highest meat intake, that gap essentially disappeared. ε4 carriers eating unprocessed animal foods looked, cognitively, like people who never had the "risky" gene in the first place.

This study isn't the first to find red meat associated with better cognitive outcomes, but it is the first to nail down that the effect is strongest in people carrying the highest-risk genotype.

To put it simply, red meat protect your brain even thought you may have the "dementia gene." So you are not at the mercy of your genes but diet and lifestyle changes can modify them and prevent disease.

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Red meat may protect your brain as you age