William Atkins
Friday, 14 August 2009 20:12
Science -
Health
Page 2 of 3
After four days and nine days of eating the new high-fat diet the researchers tested their physical endurance and their cognitive performance.
According to University of Cambridge (U.K.) professor
Andrew Murray, one of the authors of the study, stated,
"Western diets are typically high in fat and are associated with long-term complications, such as obesity, diabetes, and heart failure, yet the short-term consequences of such diets have been given relatively little attention. We hope that the findings of our study will help people to think seriously about reducing the fat content of their daily food intake to the immediate benefit of their general health, well-being, and alertness." [EurekAlert.org:
"Do high-fat diets make us stupid and lazy?"]
The researchers found that eating a high-fat diet, for nine days, produced a (1) reduced ability to exercise and (2) significant increase in short-term memory loss.
Specifically, the researchers found that the high-fat diet rats were less able to use oxygen in the blood (caused by increased levels of uncoupling protein 3) to make energy, which caused them to have hearts that had to beat harder.
Consequently, they had less ability to do physical work and exercise; that is, the group of high-fat rats were only able to run 30% of a treadmill on the fifth day and 50% as far on a treadmill by the ninth day, as compared to those rats on a low-fat diet.
In addition, the rats made more mistakes while trying to find themselves out of a maze; that is, their short-term memory deteriorated over these nine days of eating high-fat foods.
In fact, the average number of correct decisions before making a mistake went from over 6 to between 5.0 and 5.5.
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