In a study it was specified that foods low in fat, and low in calories, help prevent brain aging. The study also revealed that exercise is significantly less effective than caloric restriction in preventing these age-related changes.
"Obesity and aging prevail and increase in societies around the world, but the consequences for the central nervous system are not well understood," says Bart Eggen, a researcher at the University Medical Center of Groningen. "We determined whether a diet high in fat or low in fat, in combination with exercise and food restriction, affected the microglia during aging in mice."Microglia are brain cells that help maintain the integrity and normal functioning of brain tissue. The dysfunction of these cells, as may occur in the disease, is related to neurodevelopmental disorders and neurodegenerative conditions. Aging is also linked to the inflammation caused by microglia in specific regions of the brain, but it is not clear if diet or lifestyle can influence this process.
Eggen and his colleagues analyzed the impact of high and low-fat diets on inflammation and microglial markers in a specific region of the brain, the hypothalamus, of six-month-old mice. They also evaluated the effect of diets low in fat or high in the microglia of 2-year-old mice, which also received a lifetime exercise regimen or restricted diets for life (a 40 percent reduction in calories).
Prevention of inflammatory activation of brain cells ."The inflammatory activation of the microglia induced by aging could only be prevented when the mice were fed a low-fat diet in combination with a limited caloric intake," Eggen says. A low-fat diet per se was not enough to prevent these changes. "
The researchers also found that exercise was significantly less effective than caloric restriction in preventing these changes, although the work of others has shown that exercise is associated with reducing the risk of other diseases.
Eggen points out that much more work is still needed to understand the meaning of these findings. In their study, rodents were only given one type of diet throughout their lives. It is not clear how switching between diets would alter these results, for example, if switching to a low-fat diet could undo the negative consequences of a high-fat, unrestricted diet. More studies are also needed to determine how these changes correspond to the cognitive performance of the mice.
"However, these data show that, in mice, the fat content of a diet is an important parameter in terms of the damaging effects of aging in the brain, just like caloric intake," says Eggen. "Only when the fat content and caloric intake are limited, can the changes induced by aging in the microglia be avoided," he concludes.
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