For decades, eggs got a bad reputation. Doctors, headlines, and diet books all pointed at the yolk and told you to watch your cholesterol — so an entire generation of us swapped whole eggs for egg-white omelets, or cut them out almost entirely.

Here’s what you should know: two new studies published this year — in two different countries, looking at two completely different health outcomes — both suggest that avoidance may have been the wrong call all along. One followed heart health and lifespan. The other followed brain health. Here’s what each one actually found, including the parts that keep it honest.

Weekly eggs, lower risk of dying — especially from heart disease

Researchers followed 8,756 Australians aged 70 and older for close to six years, as part of the ASPREE study. Compared to people who rarely or never ate eggs, those who ate eggs weekly (anywhere from once to six times a week) had:

• 17% lower risk of dying from any cause
• 29% lower risk of dying from cardiovascular disease specifically

For people who already had high cholesterol, the drop in cardiovascular death risk was even bigger — 27% lower with weekly eggs. And for people already eating a moderate-to-high quality diet overall, weekly eggs were tied to a 33–44% lower cardiovascular death risk — suggesting eggs added something on top of a diet that was already solid, rather than just being a marker of healthy eating in general.

One honest wrinkle: eating eggs daily didn’t show a statistically significant benefit over not eating them at all. The clearest signal was in the weekly range, not at the extremes. More frequent isn’t automatically better — a few times a week appears to be where the benefit shows up most clearly.

More eggs, more protection for your brain

The second study is bigger and longer: over 40,000 adults aged 65 and up, followed for an average of 15.3 years, through the Adventist Health Study-2, with Alzheimer’s cases confirmed against Medicare records (not just self-report). Compared to people who rarely ate eggs, the risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease was:

• 17% lower eating eggs 1–3 times a month
• 20% lower eating eggs 2–4 times a week
• Up to 27% lower eating eggs 5+ times a week (about one egg a day or more)

That’s a dose-response pattern — the more often people ate eggs, the lower their risk tended to be, all the way up to daily. Researchers counted eggs hidden in baked goods and packaged foods too, not just the ones on your breakfast plate.

What’s actually in an egg that could do this

Nobody’s claiming eggs are magic, but there are real candidates for why this pattern shows up:

• Choline — your body uses it to build acetylcholine, a brain chemical involved in memory and communication between brain cells. One egg yolk is one of the most concentrated everyday sources of it.
• Lutein and zeaxanthin — carotenoids that accumulate in brain tissue and have been linked to better cognitive performance and less oxidative stress.
• Omega-3s and phospholipids — make up close to 30% of the fat in egg yolk, and are involved in how brain cells’ receptors function.

The honest caveats

Both studies are observational — they show a pattern, not proof that eggs caused the improvement, and neither is a substitute for a randomized trial. A few more things worth knowing:

• The Alzheimer’s study’s population (Seventh-day Adventists) eats a healthier diet than the general public on average, which could partly explain the result even after statistical adjustment.
• That same study received partial funding from the American Egg Board — a real conflict of interest worth naming, even though the findings are consistent with other independent research on eggs and brain health.
• In the Australian study, daily egg consumption didn’t clear the bar for statistical significance — worth remembering before assuming “more must be better.”

What this means for you

If cholesterol fears have kept eggs off your plate, this is a reasonable point to reconsider that — especially in midlife, when protein needs go up and brain health becomes something you’re actively thinking about, not something you take for granted. A few eggs a week, as part of an overall solid diet, is what both studies actually support — not an egg-white omelet forever, and not three-a-day either.

If you’re working on getting enough protein through midlife in general, see how plant protein compares to whey for muscle — eggs are one of the easiest complete-protein options to add back in.