This is
your brain on sugar: UCLA study shows high-fructose diet sabotages learning, memory
Date:
05/15/2012
Attention,
college students cramming between midterms and finals: Binging on soda and
sweets for as little as six weeks may make you stupid.
A new UCLA
study is the first to show how a diet steadily high in fructose slows the brain,
hampering memory and learning — and how omega-3 fatty acids can counteract the
disruption. The peer-reviewed Journal of Physiology publishes the findings in
its May 15 edition.
"Our
findings illustrate that what you eat affects how you think," said
Fernando Gomez-Pinilla, a professor of neurosurgery at the David Geffen School
of Medicine at UCLA and a professor of integrative biology and physiology in
the UCLA College of Letters and Science. "Eating a high-fructose diet over
the long term alters your brain's ability to learn and remember information.
But adding omega-3 fatty acids to your meals can help minimize the
damage."
While
earlier research has revealed how fructose harms the body through its role in
diabetes, obesity and fatty liver, this study is the first to uncover how the
sweetener influences the brain.
read more:
http://www.uclahealth.org/body.cfm?id=561&action=detail&ref=1897
image:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Fructose-1.6-bisphosphatase-pdb-3FBP.png#filehistory