The Fasting can help your brain
More than a billion Muslims around the world celebrate the holy month of Ramadan. Fasting Ramadan is a requirement for the believers. This means that they are forbidden from having sex, smoking, drinking and eating food from sunrise to sunset. Today we are talking about fasting, which includes only food. Regardless of spiritual or religious reasons,
What are the effects of not eating on human health?
A team of researchers in the United States said that fasting is good for our brain.
Mark Mattson is a neuroscientist at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland. He and others have studied how dietary restrictions can protect your brain from neurological diseases that get worse over time. Two examples of these diseases are Alzheimer's and Parkinson's, his team found that controlling and restricting calories may improve a person's memory, emotions, and state of mind. Mattson says his studies build on years of research that has confirmed links between the number of calories a person eats and mental ability. Calories are a measure of the energy in food.
However, if you eat three meals a day, with snacks in between, your body will not have time to use up all of the liver glycogen. Therefore, chemicals for learning and memory are not produced. A report in Johns Hopkins Health Review describes the links. It is said that every time we eat, a sugar called glucose is stored in the liver in the form of glycogen. It takes your body about 10 to 12 hours to use all of the glycogen.
The report said, “After using glycogen
your body begins to burn fat, which turns into chemicals that neurons use as energy. These chemicals are important for learning, memory, and overall brain health, Physical exercise can also use up glycogen, Mattson said.
Not surprisingly, he added, "exercise has been shown to have the same positive effect on the brain as fasting."
The researchers found that
reducing food intake for at least two days a week can improve neural connections in the hippocampus. This part of the brain controls emotions and plays a role in long-term memory, and a calorie-controlled diet protects neurons from the buildup of amyloid plaques.