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Fatty Foods Affect Memory and Exercise Performance
Death Metal writes "Eating fatty food appears to take an almost immediate toll on both short-term memory and exercise performance, according to new research on rats and people. Other studies have suggested that that long-term consumption of a high-fat diet is associated with weight gain, heart disease and declines in cognitive function. But the new research shows how indulging in fatty foods over the course of a few days can affect the brain and body long before the extra pounds show up."
Anecdotal evidence everyone is probably familiar with seems to confirm this. When you're at the office all day and decide to eat a pizza for lunch it seems very obvious that you're at least half way out of commission for the rest of the day. I had always assumed it was simply because one gets so stuffed from pizza, but apparently the high fat content played a big role too.
... although an occasional blunder feels SO good! Not while working though, this study clearly showed that.
Needless to say, I'm sticking to my low-fat diet with even more fervor henceforth
... erm, i forgot.
Must be early onset alzheimers
On top of all that fatty food leaves you feeling bloated.
That is why for my short-term memory loss and performance hit in physical activities I prefer marijuana.
Hmmm, what was I going to say? Oh well, back to eating.
Switching your intake to a low-carb-high-fat diet involves a grace period a week or so. This is to allow the body to "reshape" itself to use the fat as an energy source instead of the previous intake of carbonhydrates.
Symptoms of switching away from carbs to fat include; fatigue, dizzyness, high irritability and headache.
"After only a few days on the high-fat diet, the rats performed 30 percent worse on the treadmill. After five days of testing, the treadmill performance of the rats eating fatty foods had declined by half."
Any bells? So, nothing previously unknown to the lowcarbers here.
Personally, I tried the lowcarb-highfat diet about half a year ago, and actually did lose a few kilos, but the most interesting change for me was that I felt more awake, my stomach stopped producing funny amounts of gas, and never ever felt hungry. I got tired of it after a while though - I kinda missed the occasional potato and pasta - so I've taken back the lost kilos again. These days I just don't shun fat and avoid sugary stuff. Both me and my previously upset stomach feels great now.
Eating unhealthy foods causes health problems. News at 11. Try the new octo cheese burger while you're waiting.
The news actually are a cleverly disguised "Fat people are dumb".
No-one seems to have spotted the fact that the rats who were being fed fatty food may have had less motivation for completing the maze, given that the reward was more food. Am I missing something or is this entire study invalid?
because while I can chow down on an ounce, usually more, of almonds which are high in fat it does not "seem" to affect me as much as if I am eating foods the pizza you mentioned.
I am curious what the break down is. As in, which fats are good/bad for the tests they performed. Now I will state in my case I bloat less from fatty foods compared to carb laden food and I have far less trouble with my sugar levels as well. I think we are missing some key information from this article.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
And then later, some of the rats had their diet changed to a high-fat diet and others kept the same diet as before. But perhaps they just performed worse because the diet differed from what they were used to? To make a fair experiment there should also be a group of rats who were fed on a high-fat diet for two months during training, and then switched to low-fat for tests. Perhaps their performance would worsen too.
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
Totally agreed.
3 years before I start to work from home. My daily activity nearly zero. I sit chair every day. And I don't do any sport activity. Even barelly walking. Then I begin to gain weight. Probably I reach somewhere 125 kg.
2 months before I watch a documentary about eating Macs and dropping weight. Commentor says he was on low carb diet.
So I say why not ?
I Cut every carb, coke, icecream, sugar, bread, rice, pasta, cookies, chips even water mellon. And begin to eat meat etc.
Guess what ?
I'm melting man. I'm melting while I eat same amount of food. My skin get better, I do not get hugry as before. My wounds heal faster.
Now I'm about 110 kg. It was very nice to drop weight while, sitting and eating barbecue.
I just wonder what if I goto fitness center and do for example one hour working a day.
Just drop your blood sugar level. Your body will recover.
[My english is better than most other people's Turkish, so please point out mistakes politely. Thank you.]
I'm assuming these are saturated or trans-fats, which are known to cause disease and are already suspected to contribute to neurological disorders such as Alzheimer's Disease, rather than polyunsaturated fats are supposedly good for you. Neither TFA nor the study abstract indicate what they actually fed the rats.
It's very surprising that these scientists don't read basic articles in their field.
Anyone who read at least one article at this topic: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insulin_index knows that eating 50% fat, 50% carbohydrates will make your insulin spike like hell, much worse than just eating all that fat and carbs but separately separated by 2-3 hours.
Insulin spike will cause direct hit on your glucose levels to the point of hypoglycemia, hence the fatigue and slow brain + longterm increased body fat. As a result you're hungry very fast and still have no energy.
Just eat them separately.
Or take more powerful approach with carb cycle diet: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carb_cycling
It works. I feel great all the time. Was not the case on Atkin's or any other food plan I ever been on (was obese since childhood, now not).
- Arwen, I'm your father, Agent Smith.
- Well, you're just Smith, but my father is Aerosmith!
Low or no-carb diets are bad.
I remember watching a doco on low-carb high protein diets. They found that atkins was on to something, not with the low carbs but with the high protein. The group that had to have a lot of protein but could additionally eat anything else they wanted didn't actually end up eating much of anything else. The high protein seemed to cut down the cravings for snacks, snacks being what ruins most otherwise good diets.
Simple equation: energy in == energy consumed.
I don't think it's quite that simple for everyone. I've been through periods of eating really badly (high fat takeaway for lunch every day for weeks on end) and then really healthy, with identical exercise level (~none), and my weight never moved outside the 69-71kg range that i seem to have been stuck at for the last 5-10 years. I've added up the calories I intake vs the exercise I do (next to none) and by all calculations I should be a balloon. 69-71kg would be about right for my height if there was a bit more muscle on me.
If I don't eat very regularly (eg breakfast at 8am, i'll need something fairly substantial by 10am) I get the shakes and start feeling really really spaced out and crave sugar. If I continue to not eat it kind of settles down and I start feeling a bit normal again but a few hours later i'll get a horrible headache that won't go away for days even with painkillers (although something with a lot of caffeine helps at bit if it goes that far). I've been tested for diabetes and hypoglycemia several times over the years and nothing has showed anything out of the ordinary... i assume i'm just a bit more sensitive to small drops in blood sugar levels than most people.
I'm always amused when this kind of research comes out, talking about how fats are bad for you. Its much more complex than that. You really should be measure total calorie amount not just fat content. Too many calories is bad full stop. As other posters have mentioned the lack of energy is probably only a short term effect of switching to fat as a fuel source. I've switched over to a high fat/low carb diet (F50/P30/C20) and have no issues with lethargy or lack of concentration. I've got no problems with day to day programming tasks and haven't encountered any strength or endurance degradation in the gym.
I'm of the option that fat - esp saturated fat - is a much heather macro nutrient that carbs. The only carbs that the human digestive system can process in a raw state is sugar (think fruit), starch can be converted to sugar also but most of the other so called healthy carb sources needs processing before humans can consume them. Potatoes have to be cooked (try eating raw potatoes and see what happens), as does rice, wheat and grains have to be ground down into a powder. Fat on the other hand can be eaten straight off the animal. Humans aren't evolved to eat significant amounts of carbs.
I can't think of anything witty right now
If your body takes in more fat/protein/carbs etc than it needs it will either excrete them or store them... which it does depends partly on your genetic makeup, but more so on your recent pattern of diet/exercise
If you have a healthy balanced diet and do adequate exercise (not very much, and could be normal activity) then occasionally eating unhealthy foods will do no long term harm, your body will not need the extra, and does not think it needs to store it so will simply excrete the excess ....
If you starve yourself of food, or one type of nutrient then when you eat it your body will store any excess, because it thinks times are hard, this is why proper nutritionalists do not recommend mono diets (like Atkins) and when they do advise short term unbalanced diets, then they make sure you come off them slowly so this reaction does not occur ...
Atkins has been proved to work for two reasons, you are on a diet and are having to watch what you eat and you tend to order ordinary meals and then not eat part of it ... so you eat less, and it is high protein so you are getting enough energy so you feel full ....so no snacking, but as a long term diet it is unhealthy and when you stop you can't just go back to a unheathly diet ....
Puteulanus fenestra mortis
Polyunsaturated fats - Good
monounsaturated fat - Good
Staturated fats - Bad
Trans-fats - Very Bad
Almonds mostly contain monounsaturated fat which can lower your cholesterol ....
Puteulanus fenestra mortis
Now I have lost an arm and a leg, and my weight has fallen drastically ...
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
I Cut every carb, coke, icecream, sugar, bread, rice, pasta, cookies, chips even water mellon. And begin to eat meat etc.
It's worth pointing out that doing so means your grocery bill will tend to go up. Not a bad thing, of course, but in a world where people demand things being cheap (i.e., subsidised, or the product of industrial farming techniques), it may be difficult for the average person to see the value in doing so. Chickens, for example, were once upon a time considered "special" and eaten at most once per week. Today, we expect them at the drive-thru window.
Moreover, in tough economic times, the average person will want to lower the amount of money they spend, not increase it for "non-essentials" like healthy food. Poor people doubly so. From least to most expensive, our buying choices could be crudely summarised as:
1. Dirt
2. Refined Sugar or Corn Syrup
3. Carbohydrates
4. Protein
5. Fruits and Vegetables
6. Fats (Olive Oil, Butter, etc.)
7. Nuts
8. Champaign, Caviar or Hookers
So replace protein with carbohydrates if you can. I have lots of wealthy friends who do just that and demand fresh fish (fresh grilled salmon seems the most popular choice) on a daily basis. Those same people are quick to offer up factoids such as "Walnuts are a perfect food" without worrying that they cost more per pound than expensive cuts of meat. By contrast, the poor people I know typically limit their choices to refined sugar and carbohydrates.
Granted, protein is available from different sources (beans, dairy, meat from various animals) at different costs, but most of will always prefer the meat variety to form the basis of our diet.
As for the conclusions of the article, I'd raise the question that if you've succeeded in getting a happy dose of fat into your system at one indulgent sitting, what need or motivation is there for cognitive thinking? It may be that your body is telling you to just enjoy the feeling and do nothing else. Put another way, eating a pint of ice cream is not unlike smoking a joint; it's supposed to be its own reward. If you expected to be doing something else (like drive, work, operate heavy machinery, or do math), then maybe you made the wrong choice. ;-)
We knew about the affects of a high-protein diet LONG before Atkins.
Perhaps, but my wife still won't fall for it.
Eating unhealthy foods causes health problems
The study is actually very poorly designed and proves nothing of the kind. Your comment is an example of confirmation bias, as are the researcher's conclusions.
A well-designed study would start half the rats on the high-fat diet, the other half on the low fat diet. Train them to run the mazes, then switch the diets.
It may well be that the effect being observed here is "massive sudden dietary change reduces cognitive performance."
If you consider how uncomfortable and distracted you'd probably be if you were subject to this kind of violent dietary manipulation you'll see how plausible the alternative explanation is.
I share your biases with regard to fatty foods, but that doesn't mean I can't tell a poorly designed study when I see one.
Blasphemy is a human right. Blasphemophobia kills.
2) You're basically wrong on virtually every account. There *is* ample evidence that low-carb diets are bad for your brain, heart and kidneys.
3) The Inuits lack of farming couldn't have much to do with the fact that they lived in the freakin Arctic Circle, could it?
"Again, there is ample evidence to show that some people (as in many thousands) have consumed well under 2000 calories a month for decades, in the form of carbohydrates, while doing hard physical work - and wound up grossly obese. Just as others (usually much wealthier) have eaten far more than 2000 calories a day for years, while doing little or no physical work, and remained lean and fit."
Really? Under 2000 calories a day and hard work and gotten obese? Please provide this ample evidence.
My theory, developed after I lost 60 lbs, was that whenever you have two things that are diametrically opposed like low-fat, high carb/low-carb, high fat is that the answer is most frequently in the middle. Moderation in both (including carbs, a necessary source of energy) leads to great results. But, that's just my anecdotal evidence talking.
You are too dependent on your stomach to supply your blood sugar. I had this same problem in my 20s. While it is scary to be shaking if you wait a few hours you'll be fine. However it is no way to live going to meal to meal and just barely making it before the shakes set in.
Insulin stores excess blood sugar to fat so you don't going into a coma. Glucagon is the opposite, taking fat and putting it in the blood stream as sugar. Insulin work on short (15 minute) time scales. Gucagon work on hour/day time scales. It takes 3 days of no carbs to bring your glucagon levels up to the point of fully being able to provide al the blood sugar you need. Both glucagon and insulin have an inverse relationship. If your insulin is high, then glucagon is shut off. (You don't want it constantly providing blood sugar when you are about to go into a coma.
So what is happening in your body is called hyperinsulinism. You eat something, feel better, you burn some store the rest. Then your blood sugar drops below cellular satiation level. You feel hungry and get the shakes. You reach for more food as the cure... The same thing happens with rats. Take a rat, put it in a cage and provide it two sweetened water sources, one sugar, and the other a synthetic 0 calorie sweetener. At the start of the experiment, it will drink from both equally. But of the course of a few days it will only be drinking from the sugar one. Insulin makes you dependent on insulin because of its fast acting nature compared to glucagon.
I broke the cycle by not eating simple carbs. No sugary drinks, and no breads. Complex carbs like beans are ok. Basically a low-glycemic index diet is what all adults should be on. One benefit of this is with my near-zero carb diet, I can go an entire day without eating an not be hungry or tired. My glucagon level stays elevated and I am in a constant fat-burning mode. If I get hungry it is only because I ate carbs about 4 hours before. (I do allow one day a week to let loose and have cake. It seems that at zero carbs all the time I'd get dizzy and sick whenever I ate them because the rush of blood sugar was too much. I lost my lunch a couple times that way) If you are hungry, the best thing to eat is something that will slowly digest with lasting energy. Proteins are great but won't fix your immediate hunger. The trick I do is this: liquid carbs - like a Vitamin Water 10 (25 cals/bottle) fast acting, then eat something at the same time to provide a longer-duration energy source.
I cannot recommend a low-carb diet enough. It is so liberating. The Aborigines have a saying along the lines of "Western man looks at his watch to see when to eat" which highlights the differences between our diets. We are constantly looking for our next meal because of the carb/insulin dependence caused by our diets. They don't share the diet or the addiction. FYI: A person with a modest 10% body fat can live for a whopping 30 days on those reserves. What you experience in hunger intensity is not proportional to your survival predicament.
FYI: the "Atkins" diet was known to work in the 1800s, when it was called the "Banting diet" after Charles Banting whose physician recommended it. It worked so well he went about sharing it with the world.
I highly recommend everyone read "Good Calories Bad Calories" by Taubes, which is a fantastic book that critically examines what the mainstream media claims about diet.
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