Don’t just pick up anything in the shops – and you will need to keep the habit up for longer than a few days
A cheap brain supplement could help fight signs of ageing – and it may take as little as 16 weeks for the effect to take place. A post by The Scientific Report has come up with what it suggests is “the cheapest brain supplement in the shop.
The answer might be a bag of peanuts” – but it comes with a catch as you can’t just have a handful of any peanuts for a week or two. The researchers at Maastricht University Medical Center gathered 31 healthy adults aged 60 to 75. Each of them consumed 60 grams of unsalted, skin-roasted peanuts every day for 16 weeks – this is approximately two servings.
Then they compared brain scans against a stretch with no peanuts at all. It said: “The difference showed up in memory regions, including the hippocampus. Those areas responded better to insulin, a hormone brain cells rely on to survive and talk to each other.
“The same team had already found that 16 weeks of peanuts raised brain blood flow by 3.6% and improved verbal memory scores by 5.8%. That’s about two servings a day. Skins on, no salt.”
Alzheimer’s disease
The new study suggests eating peanuts every day may help support brain health and memory in older adults. Researchers found that having around two servings of unsalted, skin-roasted peanuts daily for 16 weeks improved insulin responsiveness in brain areas linked to memory – a process that often declines with age and has been associated with Alzheimer’s disease.
Researchers explained that during the study, “experts used a randomised, controlled crossover trial – a rigorous study design that allowed them to compare the effects of eating peanuts with those of avoiding them.”
Dr Peter Joris is the study’s senior author. He is an associate professor in the Department of Nutrition and Movement Sciences, NUTRIM, Maastricht University Medical Center.
He said: “The hormone insulin plays an important role in the brain, where it supports memory and other cognitive processes. As people age, the brain may become less responsive to insulin, which has been linked to age-related cognitive decline.”
He added: “Our study found that daily peanut consumption beneficially affected insulin responsiveness in memory-related brain regions in older adults. These findings suggest that enhanced regional brain insulin responsiveness may contribute to the cognitive benefits of unsalted, skin-roasted peanut intake.”
Disclaimer : This story is auto aggregated by a computer programme and has not been created or edited by DOWNTHENEWS. Publisher: www.dailyrecord.co.uk
