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Chewing ability linked to reduced dementia risk

Oct. 9, 2012

A recent study found that people who had difficulty chewing hard food, such as apples, had a significantly higher risk of developing cognitive impairments.

Several recent studies have demonstrated an association between not having teeth and loss of cognitive function and a higher risk of dementia, but the significance of chewing ability has not been directly investigated until a team of researchers from the Department of Dental Medicine and the Aging Research Center (ARC) at Karolinska Institutet and from Karlstad University in Sweden looked at tooth loss, chewing ability, and cognitive function in a random nationwide sample of 557 people aged 77 or older. They found that those who had difficulty chewing hard food, such as apples, had a significantly higher risk of developing cognitive impairments.

Read the entire story from ScienceDaily here.