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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."
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.
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?
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.]
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!
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.