Eating less may boost your brain power
December 21st 2011 00:50
Skipping the shortbread after Christmas could help keep your memory sharp, new research has found.
Through experiments with low calorie diets, a Toronto-trained researcher and his team have isolated the molecule in the brain known to enhance long-term memory and alertness. Then researchers pinpointed how the molecule, CREB1, is absolutely essential for people to gain the benefits of a moderate diet.
“People knew that eating less is good for the brain. We did not know why,” Dr. Giovambattista Pani told the Star on Tuesday.
Pani, of the Catholic University in Rome, credited his research training at Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto for honing his abilities.
“I had very good training when I was in Toronto” at Mount Sinai’s “top-class” Samuel Lunenfeld Research Institute in the mid-1990s, he said. “When I came back to Italy, I trained younger people, so we are a very motivated team.”
In their experiments, published by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, mice with standard CREB1 performed best on a calorie-restricted diet. Caloric restriction means the animals can only eat up to 70 per cent of the food they consume normally Mice bred without CREB1 showed no benefits from a calorie-restricted diet.
The researchers aren’t ready yet to move on to human clinical trials. The next stage, said Pani, is to experiment on mice using known drug compounds to achieve the same result as a 25 per cent reduction in calories.
“We’re pretty confident” that human trials will produce very similar results, he said. “CREB1 has already shown to be involved in Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases.”
In the meantime, it would still make sense to pass on the fruitcake.
“If you just cut 25 per cent of your calories, it’s very likely to be good for your brain. It’s not that much, just the cake, so it’s not really starving.
“The message is that it is not about calorie restriction, it’s about obesity.”
While many studies suggest that obesity is bad for our brain and causes early brain aging among other maladies, Pani’s team says that the precise molecular mechanism behind the positive effects of a restricted-calorie diet on the brain remained unknown till now.
As for holiday excess, Pani isn’t too worried.
“On Christmas, a person should eat as much as he or she wants. In general, the strength of nutrition is in the long run. Ninety-nine days out of 100, you should eat in a moderate way.
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