Eggs can be good for your brain

A recent study from the University of Eastern Finland has found that a relatively high intake of dietary cholesterol (eating one egg every day, for example) isn’t associated with higher risks of dementia or Alzheimer’s disease.

This finding is significant because high cholesterol levels have been linked in past studies not only to an increased risk of cardiovascular diseases, but also to an increased risk of memory disorders.

The findings, which were published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, also showed there to be no association in people carrying the APOE4 gene variant (which is common in Finland) that affects cholesterol metabolism and increases the risk of memory disorders.

And even better news for egg lovers is the researchers’ finding that the consumption of eggs was actually associated with better results in certain tests measuring cognitive performance.

For this study, the dietary habits of 2,497 men aged between 42 and 60 years and with no baseline diagnosis of a memory disorder were assessed at the beginning of the Kuopio Ischaemic Heart Disease Risk Factor Study, KIHD, in 1984 to 1989 at the University of Eastern Finland. During a follow-up period of 22 years, 337 men were diagnosed with a memory disorder, 266 of them with Alzheimer’s disease, and 32.5 per cent of the study participants were carriers of APOE4.