A diet of fruits and vegetables loaded with anti-oxidants -- such as polyphenols in green tea, lycopene in tomatoes, resveratol in red grapes and beta-carotene in carrots -- protects the body against oxidative stress, one of the major contributors to biological ageing.

Apart from their known beneficial effects on cancer and heart disease and their ability to retard age-related degeneration, some antioxidant-rich foods are now believed to actually reverse age-related neuronal and behavioral decline. Fresh spinach and strawberries (frozen would do, but not tinned), apart from the new wonderfruit, blueberries, taken over a period of time, repair the damage ageing does to the brain.

A cheap and effective anti-oxidant is Vitamin E. Found in whole grains and wheatgerm, nuts and vegetable oils, Vitamin E protects the body tissues and helps the bloodcirculate freely. Older people with high levels of Vitamin E are less likely to experience a decline in intellectual functions that usually accompanies ageing.

Black currants, tomatoes and citrus fruits such as oranges and lemon are rich in Vitamin C, another good anti-oxidant. But a cup of green tea a day can work wonders, as it has 20 times the radical-quenching abilities of Vitamin E and 500 times that of Vitamin C.

How anti-oxidants work is simple. The body's metabolism releases oxygen free radicals, DNA-damaging toxic agents which can harm the cell membrane, often killing the cell in the process. Anti-oxidants help to neutralise and subdue these oxygen free radicals. Added to this, anti-oxidants also aids neuronal communication -- the ability of one neuron to communicate with one another -- which improves short-term memory.

``Indians anyway have a diet rich in anti-oxidants because most people eat natural and fresh food, unlike in the West where most of the anti-oxidant qualities of a foodstuff arelost when it is tinned,'' said Dr Madhuri Behari, Professor of Neurology at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS).

Specialising in disorders usually associated with ageing like Alzheimer's disease and dementia, Behari says a good diet is the major reason why surveys at the Vallabhgarh Primary Health Centre in Haryana have shown that the incidence of such diseases is significantly lower in India than other parts of the world.

``Fresh and natural food is best, and that is why people in urban areas should be encouraged to give up processed food and go back to atta (wholewheat flour) and fresh fruits,'' she says.

Agrees M C Maheshwari, Head of the Neurology Department at AIIMS: ``Synthetic anti-oxidants are available, but there's nothing like fresh fruits and vegetables to make you sprightly at 70. I suspect even memory-enhancers that are flooding the market are nothing more than anti-oxidants that boost memory temporarily.'' Many ayurvedic medicines also claim to have anti-oxidativequalities, but since these claims are not backed by research, their effectiveness is suspect.

But while the West does suffer because of its food preferences, nature has helped it score over us by providing it with a potent anti-oxidant --blueberries. Neuroscientists at Tufts University in Boston found that while old rats fed on blueberry extract learned as fast as those fed on a spinach and strawberries diet, blueberries had the added quality of improving motor behaviour. This finding assumes significance since there is no known substance which can reverse the balance and coordination decline that accompanies age.