Women who are on a Mediterranean diet live significantly longer, according to a new study.
The Mediterranean diet often consists of higher consumption of food and ingredients like olive oil, fruits, fish, nuts and vegetables and lower consumption of red meat and sweets.
“In this cohort study of [25,315] women followed up for 25 years, higher adherence to the Mediterranean diet was associated with a 23 percent reduced risk of all-cause mortality,” according to the study, which was released Friday in the medical journal JAMA Network Open.
The study said factors including inflammation, insulin resistance, and body mass index contributed to explaining this lower risk, with only “minimal contributions from standard cholesterol or glycemic measures.”
The study also noted, however, that “most of the potential benefit of adherence to the Mediterranean diet and morality remains unexplained, and future studies should examine other pathways that could potentially mediate the Mediterranean diet-associated lower mortality as well as examine cause-specific mortality.”
Research from March of last year found a Mediterranean diet could assist in reducing the risk of dementia even among people who have a higher genetic risk for it. The study looked at the data of 60,298 individuals tracked for an average of nine years, with researchers finding that those who ate diets similar to the Mediterranean diet had an up to 23 percent lower risk of dementia.