We all forget names, lose keys and misplace our cell phones. Occasional brain fog is so common and has so many potential triggers (lack of sleep, stress, medications or depression, etc.) that it’s very difficult to tell if your brain is aging faster than you might expect or if your forgetfulness is just a temporary symptom of living a crazy modern life.
One thing you’ll definitely want to remember to help you stay mentally sharp is that your eating habits over time can accelerate memory decline and other indicators of declining cognitive function associated with aging. of the brain.
We are still learning about the different forms and causes of dementia and the mechanics of the abnormalities that characterize Alzheimer’s disease, but more and more research suggests that our diets play a critical role.
“What we eat affects more than our body; it also affects our brain,” he says Uma Naidoo, MDa nutritional psychiatrist, trained chef, and director of Nutritional and Lifestyle Psychiatry at Massachusetts General Hospital.
Eating an order of fries won’t fry your brain. It’s regular consumption of those unhealthy foods overtime that can compromise your brain power just as it can increase your chances of experiencing other aging-related disorders, such as heart disease, type 2 diabetes, and cancer.
Let’s review the types of foods that negatively affect our health and the research behind their dangers.
One of the ways that food affects cognitive function is through the brain-gut connection. Science suggests that an unbalanced mix of healthy and unhealthy bacteria in our microbiome can affect our brain chemistry, particularly neurochemicals like noradrenaline, serotonin and dopamine, which affect learning and memory.
A study published in European Heart Journal found that excessive consumption of red meat can increase levels of trimethylamine N-oxide (TMAO), a byproduct of gut bacteria metabolism. High levels of TMAO may be associated with a higher risk of heart attack and stroke.
An unhealthy microbiome is also linked to chronic inflammation, including brain inflammation, which can affect blood flow to the brain. “In addition, changes in gut bacteria can increase amyloid deposits, thereby contributing to Alzheimer’s disease,” writes Dr. Naidoo in her book. This is your brain on food.
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Fructose is the sugar in healthy fruit, but it’s also in cane sugar and high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS), the cheap liquid sweetener that food manufacturers add to processed foods to improve taste and keep us to eat them. Cane sugar and HFCS are so pervasive in our food supply (soft drinks, candies, condiments, salad dressings, canned soups, baked goods, breads, and other processed foods) that they can be a significant risk to the brain during the excessive years. .
The US Department of Agriculture says the average American ingests 47 pounds of cane sugar and 35 pounds of HFCS in a year. This is very sweet. Rodent studies suggest that taking a large dose of fructose can alter the ability of brain cells to signal to each other and cause memory loss and impair learning. The results suggest that “eating a high-fructose diet for a long time changes your brain’s ability to learn and remember information,” the UCLA researcher. Fernando Gomez-Pinilla, PhDsaid Science Daily.
Keep track of how often you open a box or boxes during the day. It can be an eye opener. A recent study linked getting more than 20% of your daily calories from ultra-processed foods with faster cognitive decline, memory and executive functions like juggling multiple tasks at once.
The research determined that men and women who ate the most ultra-processed foods declined 28% faster in memory, attention, verbal fluency, and visual/spatial skills and 25% faster in executive function compared to people who ate the least amount of foods very elaborate. foods. Highly processed foods include prepackaged frozen meals, chips and pretzels, ice cream, store-bought bread, cookies, cake mixes, cereals, packaged snack foods, and more.
Fried foods – French fries, fried chicken, fried jalapeno poppers, deep-fried Oreo cookies, fried okra and the like – are among the most ultra-processed foods on the planet. They’re also among the most inflammatory foods you can eat, which suggests a possible reason for the results of a large study of more than 18,000 people from a region of the Southeast known as the “shock belt,” where “redness from South”. cooking is widespread.
The link between fried foods and inflammation of blood vessels is well established by other studies. This one, published in Journal of Nutrition Scienceshowed that participants whose diets included the most scrambled foods scored the lowest on tests of memory and cognition.
Jeff Csatari
Jeff Csatari, a contributing writer for Eat This, Not That!, is responsible for editing Galvanized Media’s books and magazines and advising journalism students through the Zinczenko Center for New Media at Moravian University in Bethlehem, PA. Read more