How Eating Olive Oil Can Boost Your Memory

You now have one more excellent reason to shelve the store-bought dressing in favor of the homemade stuff: Eating a diet rich in extra-virgin olive oil may protect your brain as you age, researchers from Temple University suggest.

In the study, researchers genetically modified mice to express three key characteristics of Alzheimer’s disease: memory impairment, the buildup of sticky proteins called amyloid plaques, and tangles of tau proteins. Then, when the mice reached six months of age, they had some mice eat chow supplemented with extra-virgin olive for six months, while the others ate their regular food. This food change occurred before the mice began to exhibit signs of Alzheimer’s.

Americans Are Officially Drinking More Bottled Water Than Soda

Here’s a health trend we can get behind: Americans are now drinking more bottled water than soda, Reuters reports.

That stat comes from Beverage Marketing Corp., a research and consulting firm that tracks consumption of what we’re drinking. According to the data, 2016 was the first year that bottled water surpassed carbonated soft drinks as the largest beverage category by volume in this country.

Bottled water consumption has been growing steadily for decades, and reached 39.3 gallons per person a year in 2016. That’s about a nine percent increase from the year prior.

The Scary Health Condition Sleeping Too Long Can Signal

There’s nothing better than sleeping in, right? But sleeping for too long might be signaling something serious about your brain health, researchers from Boston University School of Medicine suggest.

In the study, people who slept for more than 9 hours a night were twice as likely to develop dementia of any kind over a 10-year follow up than those who snoozed between 6 to 9 hours nightly. They were also 71 percent more likely to develop Alzheimer’s disease.