deepstash
Beta
The Wrong Eating Habits Can Hurt Your Brain, Not Just Your Waistline
Being overweight affects the brain
A diet high in saturated fats and sugars affects your blood pressure, cholesterol, and blood sugar levels. It also affects the parts of the brain that are important to memory.
- A 2015 study found obese children performed worse on memory tasks than children who weren't overweight.
- Another study found obese people have less white matter in their brains than their lean peers - as if their brains were ten years older.
- A recent study supports one prominent theory that high body mass is linked to inflammation, which affects the brain.
70 SAVES
This is a professional note extracted from an online article.
Read more efficiently
Save what inspires you
Remember anything
IDEA EXTRACTED FROM:
3
Key Ideas
Being overweight affects the brain
A diet high in saturated fats and sugars affects your blood pressure, cholesterol, and blood sugar levels. It also affects the parts of the brain that are important to memory.
- A 2015 study found obese children performed worse on memory tasks than children who weren't overweight.
- Another study found obese people have less white matter in their brains than their lean peers - as if their brains were ten years older.
- A recent study supports one prominent theory that high body mass is linked to inflammation, which affects the brain.
Memory problems
Obese people find it more difficult to pick apart spatial, item, and temporal memory, as well as the ability to integrate them.
If you're obese, you might be up to 20 percent more likely not to remember where you put your keys.
Changing eating habits
The diet of obese people degrades their memory and makes them more likely to overeat, a study revealed.
Making a meal more memorable may help to eat less bad stuff. If you watch TV while you eat, you'll eat more than planned.
SIMILAR ARTICLES & IDEAS:
6
Key Ideas
Our Brains are Upgradable
Our minds are not static, but dynamic. The Brain has the capability to modify itself, change its structure, and to alter its biochemistry, at any age.
We can renew, rewire, ...
Juggling
You can improve your grey matter by learning a new, complex skill like juggling.
The simple act of juggling has recently been linked with better brain function. A new study reveals that learning to juggle may cause certain areas of your brain to grow.
Learn Something New
Even if it is just for 10 minutes before going to bed, you should be learning new stuff every day, a new skill, a new word, a new kind of idea or philosophy. Expose your brain to new frontiers.
3 more ideas
/Stocksy_cookies-and-ice-cream-cone_1063918-copy-57b1cb265f9b58b5c205d22a.jpg)
5
Key Ideas
Reward Response
For many people eating a little sugar stimulates a craving for more. Sugar can lead to intense feelings of hunger.
Sugar has addiction-like effects in the reward center of the brain, cau...
Sugar Addiction
Sweet foods can be more addictive than cocaine, one study found.
Over time, greater amounts of the substance are required to reach the same level of reward.
Memory
Even a single occasion of increased glucose levels in the blood can harm your brain. It can impair your memory and attention.
High sugar consumption causes inflammation in the brain. But, it can be reversed by following a low-sugar, low-GI diet.
2 more ideas
9
Key Ideas
The art of eating
... is a question of psychology as much as nutrition. We have to find a way to want to eat what’s good for us.
We make frequent attempts – more or less half-hearted – to change what we...
Food preferences are learned
All the foods that you regularly eat are ones that you learned to eat. Everyone starts life drinking milk. After that, it’s all up for grabs.
But in today’s food culture, many people seem to have acquired uncannily homogenous tastes: food companies push foods high in sugar, fat and salt, which means we are innately incapable of resisting them but that the more frequently we eat them, especially in childhood, the more they train us to expect all food to taste this way.
0.3% of young women are anorexic
... and another 1% are bulimic, with rising numbers of men joining them.
What statistics are not particularly effective at telling us is how many others – whether overweight or underweight – are in a perpetual state of anxiety about what they consume, living in fear of carbs or fat grams and unable to derive straightforward enjoyment from meals.
6 more ideas
5
Key Ideas
Metabolism
It refers to the thousands of chemical reactions that turn what we eat and drink into fuel in every cell of the body. These reactions change in response to our environments and behaviors, an...
How The Body Uses Calories
- Basal metabolism is the energy our body needs to keep our cells working and accounts for 65-80% of most adults' caloric consumption.
- The thermic effect of food is the energy our body uses to process food and accounts for 10% of most adults' caloric consumption.
- Physical activity accounts for 10 - 30 % of most people’s caloric consumption .
Controlling Your Own Weight
Not everyone overeats and becomes overweight, and not everyone who becomes overweight or obese develops illnesses like diabetes or heart disease.
There was never a special diet, exercise regimen, or supplement that worked universally to control weight. Through trial and error, we have to discover habits and routines we can stick with that help us eat less and move more.
2 more ideas
9
Key Ideas
Never stop learning
Research shows that people with more education have a greater cognitive reserve and this works as a protection in the face of mental decline.
But there's a twist to it: educated people t...
Crosswords
Cognitive activities like crossword puzzles, reading or playing music may delay memory decline among people who eventually developed dementia.
Stereotype threat
It happens when a person is in a situation where they are anxious that they may conform to a negative stereotype aimed at his or her social group.
Positive stereotypes, or success on previous memory tasks, can help combat this negativity.
6 more ideas
14
Key Ideas
Dopamine Explained
We all seek happiness, and there is a scientific way we can find it.
Dopamine, the feel-good chemical in our brains, positively affects our mood, focus, energy and behaviour.
Happiness Centre: Dopamine
Dopamine is a neurotransmitter that controls our brain's reward and pleasure centre. It can help us:
- Lose Weight
- Fight against Depression
- Be Motivated
- Improve our Memory
- Feel Happy
- Stay mentally strong
- Reduce bad habits
- Increase Feelings of contentment
How Dopamine Works
The body and mind seek pleasureable experiences, resulting in the neurons creating dopamine in our brain. This can be also overdone using drugs, leaving a negative impact eventually.
11 more ideas
6
Key Ideas
Your metabolism
It is in every cell in your body. It refers to a series of chemical processes in each cell that turn the calories you eat into fuel to keep you alive.
The body's major organs — th...
How we burn energy
There are 3 main ways:
- the basal metabolism, the energy used for your body's basic functioning while at rest
- the energy used to break down food (also known as the thermic effect of food)
- the energy used in physical activity.
Most of the energy you burn is from your resting metabolism.
Metabolism variations
Metabolism can vary a lot between people, and researchers don't understand why.
2 people with the same size and body composition can have different metabolic rates. One can consume a huge meal and gain no weight, while the other has to carefully count calories to not gain weight.
3 more ideas