Memory Loss and Cognitive Decline

Introduction

There are many conditions in Western industrialised societies today that were unheard of, or at least very rare, just a century ago. The same conditions are still unheard of in primitive peoples who do not have the 'benefits' of our knowledge. There is a very good reason for this: They eat what Nature intended; we don't. The diseases caused by our incorrect and unnatural diets are those featured on these pages.

Dietary causes of Memory loss and cognitive decline:

Introduction

The food we eat has a wide range of effects on our body systems. So it seems logical to suppose that the brain could also be affected by incorrect diet.

Apart from water, our brains are about three-quarters fat. We need a steady intake of fats for our brains to function properly — and that intake must be of the right fats. Also, while our brains account for only about 2.5% of our body weight, they use about 20% of our bodies' total energy. For these reasons, food intakes and fluctuations in energy levels can have a profound effect on how our brains are formed as infants and how well they perform later in life, as well as affecting our behaviour and emotions.

The various major food groups — carbohydrates, proteins and fats — have different effects on the brain. Carbohydrates engender a feeling of well-being and induce sleepiness. But they also have a wide range of other effects. For example:

• Sugar can cause hyperactivity, anxiety, concentration difficulties, and crankiness in children.[1]
• Sugar can cause drowsiness and decreased activity in children.[2]
• Sugar can adversely affect children's school grades.[3]
• Sugar can cause an increase in delta, alpha and theta brain waves, which can alter the mind's ability to think clearly.[4]
• Sugar can cause depression.4
• Many neurological illnesses are also associated with cereal grain consumption.[5]
• Nearly one out of every five paediatric patients with type-2 diabetes also has a brain-development disorder, psychiatric illness or behavioural disorder.[6]

This last case tends to confirm the link between diet and these diseases. The sad thing is that instead of correcting these children's diets, psychotropic medications are often prescribed. Many of these are associated with weight gain, hyperglycaemia or glucose intolerance. Dr. Lorraine E. Levitt Katz stated that, 'We started seeing pediatric patients who had gained a tremendous amount of weight while they were on some of the newer atypical antipsychotic agents.' This treatment can only make the situation worse.

Changing eating habits away from carbohydrates and damaged fats and towards healthy fats and protein prevents many increasingly common conditions from hyperactivity in children to Alzheimer's disease in adults. This chapter looks at some of the more common.

Memory, cognitive ability and glucose

Under normal circumstances, the brain uses glucose as its main metabolic energy source. You might expect, therefore, that higher the levels of glucose in your blood would mean that your brain would operate more efficiently. But this is not necessarily the case. Scientists at the Department of Psychology, University of Wales, found that a rapid climb in blood glucose from the common 'healthy' type of carbohydrate-rich breakfast had a damaging effect on cognitive performances such as verbal memory in young adults during the four hours following such a breakfast. [7] On the other hand, their subjects performed much better after a meal that did not cause glucose levels to rise quickly. This naturally has implications for other conditions influenced by how the brain operates, particularly where memory is concerned.

Breakfast for brain power . . .

If you are to perform at your best and be bright and alert, breakfast is a must. Missing breakfast has consequences as far as mental and physical work are concerned. Energy intake at breakfast affects the performance of creativity tests, memory recall and voluntary physical endurance in children before lunch, and food craving during the whole day.

In 1995, Dr Ernesto Pollitt, Professor of Human Development in the Program in International Nutrition at the University of California's School of Medicine, conducted a review of papers published in refereed journals since 1978 on the differences in children's abilities after breakfast compared to fasting.[8] He concluded, on the whole, that children performed better after having breakfast. But there were some notable exceptions. In some, breakfast made no difference to performance and in one study children did better when they did not have breakfast. It is significant that in all these cases, breakfast was again almost entirely carbohydrate based: cornflakes, semi?skimmed milk, sugar, wholemeal toast with margarine and marmalade.

Low cholesterol harms memory

A Boston University research team concluded that not having enough dietary cholesterol could also cause a measurable deficit in mental functioning. Their findings showed that when the lowest-cholesterol group was compared with the highest-cholesterol group (those with blood levels of 6.25-9.9 mmols/L), the low-cholesterol group were as much as 80% more likely to perform poorly on tests of similarities, word fluency, attention, and concentration.

References

[1]. Goldman J, et al. Behavioral Effects of Sucrose on Preschool Children. J Abnormal Child Psych 1986; 14: 565-577
[2]. Behar D, Rapoport J, Berg C, et al. Sugar Testing with Children Considered Behaviorally Sugar Reactive. Nutritional Behavior 1984; 1: 277-288
[3]. Alexander Schauss. Diet, Crime and Delinquency. Parker House, Berkeley, CA. 1981.
[4]. Christensen L. The Role of Caffeine and Sugar in Depression. The Nutrition Report 1991; 9 (3): 17-24.
[5]. Hadjivassiliou M, et al. Does cryptic gluten sensitivity play a part in neurological illness? Lancet 1996; 347: 369–371.
[6]. Levitt Katz LE, et al. Neuropsychiatric disorders at the presentation of type 2 diabetes mellitus in children. Pediatr Diabetes 2005; 6: 84-89.
[7]. Benton D, et al. The delivery rate of dietary carbohydrates affects cognitive performance in both rats and humans. Psychopharmacology 2003; 166: 86-90.
[8]. Pollitt E. Does breakfast make a difference in school? J Am Diet Assoc 1995; 95: 1134.