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Cognitive Impairment: Blueberries and Grapes for Your Brain

Sometimes called Lou Gehrig’s disease after the baseball player who died of it, ALS is a nervous system disease that leads to loss of muscle control and, eventually, death. A simple alteration in diet may help symptoms and extend life.

Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is a neurological disease that affects the nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord, leading to loss of muscle control. Previous research has found that getting more alpha-linolenic acid, the omega-3 essential fatty acid found in plant foods, is associated with a lower risk of getting ALA. That promising research has never been followed up by studies on what benefit the omega-3 EFA might have for people who already have ALS.

So, researchers followed 449 people with ALS for 18 months and measured their dietary intake of omega-3 EFA’s, the severity of their symptoms and their rate of death during the study. What they found was encouraging because it was effective and simple to do. The people who had more of the omega-3 alpha-linolenic acid had better symptom scores.

At the start of the study, the group that got the most omega-3 had an average score of 38.3 versus a score of 37.6 in the group who got the least. And it was not just symptoms that improved. So did the chance of survival. People who had the most alpha-linolenic acid in their diet had a 50% lower risk of dying during the study than the people who had the least. There were 21 deaths in the group with the highest alpha-linolenic acid, or 19% of the group, versus 37 deaths, or 33% of the group who got the least.

Flaxseed and flax seed oil is one of the best sources of alpha-linolenic omega-3 fatty acids. Several other nuts and seeds, including walnuts and chia are also good sources. This study offers hope to people with ALS that getting more plant based omega-3 fatty acids can help symptoms, functional decline, and survival.

Neurology. 2023;doi:10.1212/WNL.0000000000207485