Fasting improves your memory ! – Conference Venues that care
A new report indicates that fasting may well improve your memory. Maybe this is something that London conference and meeting venues should take into account when designing their menu’s ? At Cavendish Venues we constantly redesign our menu’s with a food to reducing food waste. We are about to introduce a range of vegan menu’s, maybe now we should look at our conference menu’s with memory loss in mind?
Research
Research in rodents has revealed that restricting their calorie intake led to new cells or neurons being produced in their brain – a process called neurogenesis. Scientists also observed measurable improvements in their memory. Dr Sandrine Thuret and Curie Kim, at KCL, are investigating whether this could also happen in adult humans.
Experiment
Kings College London recruited 43 people between 45 and 75.They were all put on a calorie-restricted diet for four weeks. This involved them restricting their calorie intake on two days a week to 500 or 600 calories. On the other five days, they ate as much as they normally would.
At the beginning and end of the four-week intervention, each person took part in a memory test known as a ‘pattern separation’ test. This looks at the ability to distinguish between images that are completely new, and those that are similar to ones the individual has seen before. Each participant also had a blood test to measure levels of a protein called Klotho, which normally declines with age. Several studies have established that an increase in Klotho is a marker of neurogenesis.
Results
The group results were highly encouraging. Across the group overall, pattern separation improved, and levels in Klotho went up. So this study shows that eating less can improve your memory, and the increase in Klotho suggests that neurogenesis may have occurred.
Sandrine and Curie are now working on a larger study focusing solely on those aged 60 and over to investigate exactly how significant this could be for older people.
What should I do?
The results suggest that if you are in the older age group, and don’t do a lot of exercise, fasting two days a week could give your memory a boost. Women should limit their intake to 500 calories on those two days, and for men it’s 600 – then just eat as you normally do for the rest of the week.
Links
https://kclpure.kcl.ac.uk/portal/sandrine.1.thuret.html
https://kclpure.kcl.ac.uk/portal/en/persons/curie-kim(4c0fafc4-8ed9-4eb4-b9dc-5adc1202e53a).html
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