5mo ago

New study links red meat to faster cognitive decline

www.psypost.org

N=133,000 over 40 year time period

Observational study so limitations may apply but the findings do hold after adjusting for a large list of factors I will quote here:

educational attainments, family history of dementia, menopausal status with hormone use status, total energy intake, regular antidepressant drug use, history of depression, BMI, moderate-to-vigorous physical activity, neighborhood SES [socioeconomic status], marital status, living arrangement, smoking status, histories of hypertension, diabetes, and hypercholesterolemia and intakes of sugar-sweetened beverages, fruits, vegetables, whole grains, poultry, fish, eggs, nuts and legumes, low-fat dairy products, high-fat dairy products, and alcohol

41 comments

Yet another reason to shift to more veganism.
- People really need more whole plant foods in their diets.
  
  From a health perspective, economic perspective, climate perspective, and ethical perspective.
  
  Stupid question - are whole plant foods just fruit and veggies and nuts, or is it also stuff like nut milks, chickpea pasta, etc?
- Fun fact, we have canine teeth. Which means like every other omnivor and carnivore, we as humans are designed to eat meat. Just not hugely growth hormone filled meat like modern beef and chicken and pork. We're made to eat wild healthy God raised and not farm raised meat. But yes you alsomust maintain a balance of meat and vegetables.
  
  Humans aren't "designed" to do anything, they evolved over time to better suit their environments. You can get all the micro and macro nutrients you need as a vegan, and there is no physical way for every human on Earth to eat wild meat to begin with.
Go vegan
- At old age meat eaters have more muscle mass (left), and that's a big deal too.
  Don't go extremist over some obscure paper is all I'm saying. We should all eat less meat BTW especially red.
I dont wanna remember shit anyway
- Put that in writing.
  
  Huh? Put what in writing? I'm eating smoked ham
that's why I always brown it first
/s
- That just takes something already bad, and makes it much worse.
https://www.neurology.org/doi/10.1212/WNL.0000000000210286
I don't have time to dive into this paper myself yet. Has anyone else been able to and can give a quick summary of that they did to infer the causal relationship from observational data?
Edit: Aaah, I don't have access to the paper. I guess this isn't happening.
- I can't actually access the full paper (either via university access, or Anna's Archive/sciDB), so I can't comment on specifics, but their extended abstract mentions that that they used "Cox proportional hazards models, general linear regression, and Poisson regression models were applied to assess the associations between red meat intake and different cognitive outcomes."
  Speaking as a biochemist (i.e. someone well versed in reading scientific papers from the life sciences, but who does not have particular training or experience with the quite different context of clinical medicine research), it looks fairly legit, in that those statistical methods are typical of what I'd expect for something like this. That's vague, but it passes the sniff test, I suppose.
  I was initially dubious of the journal/research on the basis of being unable to access the paper (and not knowing anything of this journal), but I feel comfortable in dismissing those concerns after have a wee gander at the journal itself (it seems fairly prominent and well respected). Having not read the paper (nor being familiar with this specific area of research), I am far less able to judge the paper itself, but at least it's not a case of dismissing the research outright because of the journal being sus.
  Without knowing your background, it's hard to gauge whether this explainer on some of the stats methods mentioned above would be appreciated, but here you go, just in case.
  
  Thanks, I appreciate the link. I'm a scientist by trade too, but not in a field where hazard ratios would be part of my repertoire.
  My concern is not so much the quality of the publisher (though it's nice to know) or whether they used methods that are standard for these kinds of studies, but rather whether the general public is coming to the correct conclusions given what the researchers did.
  So based on just this little excerpt, it seems that there's no casual relationship being established at all. They don't seem to claim any casual relationship either. On the other hand, the psypost article talks about it as if they did.
My reason for cutting red meat out of my diet was that it's expensive, glad there's other reasons it's a good choice too
Starting to feel like that's a serendipitous feature.
I guess it isn't terribly surprising given red meat is known to be inflammatory and inflammation can cause cognitive decline.
Hmmm, I wonder if they're conflating processed foods and red meat again?
Yep:
Eating processed red meat (such as sausages, bacon, hotdogs and salami) was linked to a 16% higher risk of dementia and a faster rate of cognitive ageing. Eating about two servings of processed red meat a week raised the risk of dementia by 14% compared with those who ate less than about three servings a month. (A serving is a piece of meat roughly the size of a deck of playing cards – around 85g.)
If people substituted processed red meat protein for that found in nuts, tofu or beans, they could reduce their dementia risk by 19%, the study found.
A review of studies, published in 2023, found that people who ate lots of ultra-processed foods (of all kinds – not just processed meats) had a 44% higher risk of dementia
- No, they also found associations with unprocessed red meats too
  Unprocessed red meat intake of ≥1.00 serving per day, compared with <0.50 serving per day, was associated with a 16% higher risk of SCD [subjective cognitive decline] (RR 1.16; 95% CI 1.03–1.30; plinearity = 0.04).
Kinda glad my body decided to just stop digesting beef a few years ago. I'm learning so much about what I can be potentially avoiding by not being able to consume it. Beef just sits in my stomach for an absurdly long time. So I don't eat it. I have mostly fish as my animal protein, but substitute with plant based proteins and sometimes chicken to avoid too much mercury. I eat pork on occasion but it isn't my favorite. I tried going vegetarian and vegan a couple of times and my already poor health declined. Now I do whatever it is that I do lol. I just eat what I like and what I know is good for my specific health conditions.
- They have a large data set, you can adjust for a lot more when your sample size is 133,000
  No mention of obesity
  They account for BMI as mentioned in what I quoted
- It's from two of the largest, most rigorous cohorts in the country. I am definitely going to trust this science over the flippant comment of an internet rando anyday.
  https://www.neurology.org/doi/10.1212/WNL.0000000000210286
  
  And you can still find a different "cause" every month
processed
Thank goodness I never found processed meat appealing or appetizing.
This is my idea of red meat.
- Here's a much better idea of meat, that doesn't cause cognitive decline.
- They also found associations with unprocessed red meats too
  Unprocessed red meat intake of ≥1.00 serving per day, compared with <0.50 serving per day, was associated with a 16% higher risk of SCD [subjective cognitive decline] (RR 1.16; 95% CI 1.03–1.30; plinearity = 0.04).
  
  There’s plenty of good reasons to cut down on meat, health is only one of them. I try to go meatless whenever I can.
Fuck it. I'm having an A5 Wagyu soon, as a bday treat.
- Hell yeah! Dry-aged to perfection!
I would wager its not because of the meat but because microplastic contamination is much higher in processed food, especially meats. People are often eating the maximum dosage for plastics in a year in one meal. Its very hard to avoid. Microplastic contamination is highly correlated to dementia.
- Along out the spoonful of plastic on my brain could do wonders.
  
  I'm friends with my spoon I'd hate to see it leave

41 comments