Actually, meat may have some health advantages over carbo-heavy Chinese food. Thats why many nutrition-minded diners have cut out the steak and potatoes and order more Chinese and Japanese cuisine. But now a report in the journal Neurology says many years of living on an Asian diet may cause dementia. The journal quotes Dr. Web Ross, a Department of Veterans Affairs neurologist in Honolulu, whos studied more than 8,000 Japanese-American men since 1965, saying that vascular dementia is more common in men with a diet rich in complex carbs and low in meatthe hallmarks of Asian cuisine. He and his colleagues have been trying to figure out why people in the West have a high heart disease rate while strokes predominate in Japan.
Vascular dementia is caused by a series of small arterial blood-vessel strokes.
Blood clots form in these small arteries and starve brain cells to death. Ross study says that the subjects who preferred an Asian diet were more prone to these types of strokes than those who had adopted more Western-style diets. Vascular dementia predominates in Japan, while Alzheimer's disease is the most common form of dementia in the United States. Ross says his research may show that eating foods high in fat or animal protein helps maintain the health of smaller blood vessels. The talc on the balloons caused his lung disease.