The Wrong Eating Habits Can Hurt Your Brain, Not Just Your Waistline
1–10 of 39 posts
Re: The Wrong Eating Habits Can Hurt Your Brain, Not Just Your Waistline
#2This falls into the category of "things I didn't know, but I assumed anyway."
I don't know why the brain and body are still presented as being so distant-- it's all one system!
If you're treating your body poorly, how is that not going to negatively effect the most important and complex organ of said body?
Re: The Wrong Eating Habits Can Hurt Your Brain, Not Just Your Waistline
#3This falls into the category of "things I didn't know, but I assumed anyway." I don't know why the brain and body are still presented as being so distant-- it's all one system! If you're treating your body poorly, how is that not going to negatively effect the most important and complex organ of said body?
Yeah that makes sense, but since the body is a complex system, it _would_ be possible that something like the following is going on. This is fictional, but _could_ be true, if we didn't know otherwise.
Your body prioritizes certain organs and bodily functions over others, depending on the resources that it gets. Who knows, perhaps when the body recognizes that it's not getting enough of a certain vitamin, it will change how it distributes the vitamin throughout the body. Now, because of evolutionary reasons, a function evolved that when the body recognizes the brain is getting too little of a certain vitamin, it takes a larger portion of what _is_ coming in, to make sure that the brain functions properly so it can solve the issue of poor diet, making a cut elsewhere in the body.
Of course, this is utter bullcrap, but it _could_ have been true.
Though, I'm completely with you, this is something I always assumed as well.
Re: The Wrong Eating Habits Can Hurt Your Brain, Not Just Your Waistline
#4This falls into the category of "things I didn't know, but I assumed anyway." I don't know why the brain and body are still presented as being so distant-- it's all one system! If you're treating your body poorly, how is that not going to negatively effect the most important and complex organ of said body?
I think this has much to do with commercial interests.. if there where a higher stigma around the actual cognitive effects of junk-food and sugar it could generate fewer sales.
A fitting Terrance McKenna quote:
We do not think of ourselves as a meat/sugar/alcohol culture. People do not walk around saying "Oh wow, I'm so high on meat, alcohol and sugar!" but they ARE!
Re: The Wrong Eating Habits Can Hurt Your Brain, Not Just Your Waistline
#5I don't buy that they "forgot they were full" because of diminished short term memory. When people overeat, I do not buy that it is because they actually forgot that they already ate.
Some other brain effect could make sense, but this one seems weak.
Re: The Wrong Eating Habits Can Hurt Your Brain, Not Just Your Waistline
#6I don't buy that they "forgot they were full" because of diminished short term memory. When people overeat, I do not buy that it is because they actually forgot that they already ate. Some other brain effect could make sense, but this one seems weak.
They are talking about the rats, with people, it's the fact that people don't feel full - they still feel hungry, so they continue to eat.
Re: The Wrong Eating Habits Can Hurt Your Brain, Not Just Your Waistline
#7I don't buy that they "forgot they were full" because of diminished short term memory. When people overeat, I do not buy that it is because they actually forgot that they already ate. Some other brain effect could make sense, but this one seems weak.
They are talking about the rats, with people, it's the fact that people don't feel full - they still feel hungry, so they continue to eat.
How do you know it's not the same for the rats? :P
Re: The Wrong Eating Habits Can Hurt Your Brain, Not Just Your Waistline
#8I notice a moderate effect on my cognitive ability due to weekly or monthly alcohol consumption (longer term than the hangover cycle). There have been a few times in my life (such as when studying for my PhD comprehensive exams) that I quit drinking completely for over a month and I was quite surprised at how much more clarity of thought and memory I had. Not enough to make me abstain from drinking altogether, but enough that it's helped me drink substantially less.
Re: The Wrong Eating Habits Can Hurt Your Brain, Not Just Your Waistline
#9I'm not seeing how this evidence points to overeating --> brain impairment. To me it implies brain impairment --> overeating.
> He did that by studying rats that had very specific types of hippocampal damage and seeing what happened to them.
This researcher started with mice that had damage, and observed they overate. This implies brain impairment --> overeating. The other memory studies in the article with obese or lean subjects cannot infer causality.
> However, even though we are beginning to understand that obesity affects the brain, we don't exactly know how [...]
Perhaps the connection is people with brain impairment (either genetic or damage from the environment) tend to overeat, since the brain plays a role in hunger and satiation. Is there evidence that the article omits that backs up the headline?
Re: The Wrong Eating Habits Can Hurt Your Brain, Not Just Your Waistline
#10I notice a moderate effect on my cognitive ability due to weekly or monthly alcohol consumption (longer term than the hangover cycle). There have been a few times in my life (such as when studying for my PhD comprehensive exams) that I quit drinking completely for over a month and I was quite surprised at how much more clarity of thought and memory I had. Not enough to make me abstain from drinking altogether, but en…
This could also be related to sleep.
- Alcohol reduces the quality of your sleep, so you'll likely be playing catch-up regularly if you drink regularly before bed.
- Removing alcohol often removes the social situations surrounding alcohol, such as going out drinking till late. This means less alcohol will help stabilize your sleep cycle and keep you from spending too many nights out late.
I found that (during a difficult undergraduate course) sticking to a strict sleep schedule (and getting sufficient sunlight in the mornings) had a very positive effect on my cognitive ability.