High fat diet effects on brain health can be harmful, especially to old people. According to research, a diet that contains a high level of fats can cause inflammation in the brain even without any metabolic changes.
A brand new research in rats highlighted that consuming food high in saturated fat for just a few days is enough to create memory problems and brain inflammation in adults. Researchers fed groups of old and young rats a diet that had saturated fat for either three days or three months. The main purpose of the research was to know how quickly the brain can respond to an unhealthy diet compared to the rest of the body.
Based on prior research on diabetes and obesity, the results came as expected. The rats that consumed the high-fat diet for 3 months evolved metabolic issues, gut inflammation and significant changes in gut bacteria. On the contarary, the rats that consume high fat food for 3 days, showed no single signs of metabolic and gastrointestinal changes.
The researchers, however, while examining the brain, found out that only older rats performed badly on memory tests and showed signs of brain inflammation, regardless of whether they consumed high-fat food for three days or three months.
According to Ruth Barrientos, a researcher at Ohio State University, research resulted in the finding that diet-related inflammation is not solely driven by obesity in aging brains. The research’s primary focus is on the effects of processed and high-fat foods on the brain in relation to obesity. However, the impact of unhealthy food, independent from obesity, is still unexplored on a vast level.
Moreover, Professor Barrientos also stated that unhealthy diets are linked to obesity but also can be separated. The focus of research is the direct effects of unhealthy diet on the brain, revealing that a significant neuroinflammatory shift occurs within three days, even before obesity develops.
Changes in the body occur slowly and are not the cause of memory issues directly. Brain inflammation is the primary culprit behind memory problems induced by a high-fat diet. The conclusion can only be reached by comparing different timelines of bodily changes and brain inflammation, according to Barrientos’ conclusion.
