No more fast food, sweets and other ultra-processed foods for teenagers! A US study conducted on rats links lasting memory impairment to a diet rich in fat and sugar during adolescence.
According to the study published in the journal Brain, Behavior and Immunity by researchers from the University of Southern California, there is a link between what we eat and how our brain functions, specifically the hippocampus.
A brain structure playing a central role in cognition, memory and learning, the hippocampus houses a chemical substance called acetylcholine. This neurotransmitter is involved in memory and functions such as learning, attention, arousal, and involuntary muscle movement.
Previous research has shown that people with Alzheimer’s disease tend to have lower levels of acetylcholine in the brain. And now, a diet too rich in fat and sugar could disrupt the signal from this neurotransmitter, researchers say.
The experts determined this after they carried out analyses on two groups of rats, one fed a diet rich in fat and sugar, the other a healthy diet. These were provided both at a very young age and at a later age similar to adolescence.
Following object-based memory tests, the experiment revealed that recall issues did not disappear with the removal of junk food, not even when the diet was improved. In other words, a poor diet in adolescence appears to have a long-term impact on memory, the effects of which may not be easily reversible.
“Acetylcholine signalling helps rats encode and remember events, analogous to ‘episodic memory’ in humans that allows us to remember events from our past. That signal appears to not be happening in the animals that grew up eating the fatty, sugary diet,” the experts noted.
Memory issues aside, for years, a body of research has been demonstrating the profound link between the brain and the digestive system, with the gut identified as a kind of “second brain”.
This notion has been popularised in books such as Giulia Enders’ “Gut: The Inside Story of Our Body’s Most Underrated Organ”.