We’re learning a lot these days… About how wrong we’ve been regarding certain medical ‘facts’ we’ve been taking for granted. Now, science confirms that an unhealthy, high-fat diet can impair memory. Even if we eat it for only 3 days!
Specifically, we’re taking about how a diet high in saturated fat could be enough to cause memory problems and related brain inflammation in older adults…
Preliminary studies…
As often is the case with such studies, researchers have started their investigation with basic rat-lab experiments. But, again, as we often remind our faithful readers, many mouse and rat results can foretell results on the same issues in humans…
What they did
Most research on the effects of fatty and processed foods on the brain has focused on obesity. “Yet, the impact of unhealthy eating, independent of obesity, remains largely unexplored.,” senior study author Ruth Barrientos, an investigator in the Institute for Behavioral Medicine Research at The Ohio State University (OSU) points out.
“Unhealthy diets and obesity are linked, but they are not inseparable,” Barrientos explains. “We’re really looking for the effects of the diet directly on the brain.
To check their hypothesis, the researchers set up a simple experiment using two groups of identical rats. One was given a standard diet of ‘rat chow’. The other was fed a special high-fat diet meant to emulate the fat levels one would receive from a regular diet of, say, McDonald’s burgers. The rats’ memories and blood chemistry were tested at regular intervals for up 3 months.
What they found
Aged rats showed behaviors indicating memory was impaired after only three days of fatty food. And the behaviours persisted as the rats continued on the high-fat diet for three months. But even after three months on the high-fat diet, young rats’ memory behaviour and brain tissue remained unaf-fected by the fatty food.
Researchers also saw changes in levels of a range of proteins called cytokines in the brains of aged rats after three days of fatty food, which signaled ‘a dysregulated inflammatory response’.
The takeaway
Barrientos says her team thinks this is likely due to the ability of young rats to activate compensatory anti-inflammatory responses, which the aged animals lack.
“Also,” she notes, “there’s no way to distinguish what is causing memory impairment in only old animals if you look only at what’s happening in the body. It’s what is happening in the brain that’s important for the memory response.”
So… As is often the case in such experiments, Barrientos most important takeaway may be that concerted further research is necessary.
My take
Here’s a very early finding that nevertheless suggests something we – or science, at least – took for granted was wrong. And, as is often the case, this discovery will prompt further investigation that will push our understanding of the body and brain further forward.
One clear indication of the study’s findings is, changing from a high-fat diet to a low saturated fat regime at any point in your life should help protect your memory functions as well as help you fight systemic inflammation…
~ Maggie J.