William Atkins
Tuesday, 27 January 2009 21:09
Science -
Health
Page 1 of 3
A German study has shown a diet that restricts the amount of calories eaten each day improves the memory in older women. It is considered the first study in humans to find such a link.
The article “
Caloric restriction improves memory in elderly humans” was published online on January 26, 2009 in the journal
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (
10.1073/pnas.0808587106).
Its authors--A.V. Witte, M. Fobker, R. Gellner, S. Knecht, and Agnes Flöel--are all from various departments within the
University of Münster, in Münster, Germany
They report that previous studies with animals found that diets low in calories and rich in unsaturated fats are helpful to reduce memory loss as one grows older.
Based on this premise, the German researchers studied elderly humans to see if memory could be improved with a caloric restricted diet. It is thought that this is the first study to have linked a restricted caloric diet with improved memory.
They studied fifty healthy female women that were of normal weight to overweight. They average age of the subjects were 60.5 year (50 to 72 years).
The average body mass index (
BMI, a ratio of height to weight) was 28.2 (middle of the “overweight” group), which is about 175 pounds for a woman who is 5-foot, 6-inches in height.
Page two details the process of the study.
