Pescatarians rejoice! It seems that some scientists believe that your diet can help protect you from the dreaded Alzheimer’s Disease as you grow older. According to reports, fish actually helps maintain your brain’s grey matter, which is directly related to memory loss when it deteriorates.

A research team led by Dr. Cyrus Raji M.D., Ph.D., from the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center and the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, studied 260 cognitively normal individuals who were selected from the Cardiovascular Health Study. The study controlled for age, gender, education, race, obesity, physical activity, and whether or not the research participants had apolipoprotein E4 (ApoE4), a gene that increases the risk of developing Alzheimer’s.

“This is the first study to establish a direct relationship between fish consumption, brain structure and Alzheimer’s risk,” said Dr. Raji. “The results showed that people who consumed baked or broiled fish at least one time per week had better preservation of gray matter volume on MRI in brain areas at risk for Alzheimer’s disease.”

The medical professionals were excited to report that they found strong evidence to support the addition of fish to a person’s diet.

“Working memory, which allows people to focus on tasks and commit information to short-term memory, is one of the most important cognitive domains,” Dr. Raji said in the press statement. “Working memory is destroyed by Alzheimer’s disease. We found higher levels of working memory in people who ate baked or broiled fish on a weekly basis. Even when accounting for other factors, such as education, age, gender and physical activity.”

Now all we have to do is to make sure our oceans, rivers, and other water sources are not contaminated by industrial run-off or overfished by industrial fishing practices.