Recent Studies Provide Food for Thought
A high-fat diet may be linked to the hyperactivity disorder ADHD and learning disabilities, new research suggests.
The effect is so profound that eating lots of fatty food for even a week can cause behavioural changes - even before any weight gain sets in.
The researchers, from the University of Illinois, found that mice fed a high-fat diet (60 per cent of calories from fat) versus a low fat diet (10 per cent) behaved very differently.
A typical Western diet contains between 35 and 45 per cent fat.
'We found that a high-fat diet rapidly affected dopamine metabolism in the brains of juvenile mice, triggering anxious behaviors and learning deficiencies,' said Gregory Freund, a professor in the university’s Division of Nutritional Sciences.
Back in 2006, a medical study on probiotics for autism proved so successful that the study ‘failed’.
The study, by Prof Glenn Gibson at Reading University, UK, found that autistic children vastly improved their concentration and behavior when given probiotics, or ‘friendly bacteria’.
It involved 40 autistic children, aged 4 to 8, half of whom were given the probiotic bacteria L. Plantanum while the other half received a dummy ‘probiotic’.
It was supposed to have been a blind study, where the participants were not told who were taking the actual probiotics and who were taking placebos or dummy medicine.
As part of this probiotics for autism study, parents were asked to record their children’s mood and behavior in a diary.
The results were too obvious.
Parents whose autistic children were taking the actual probiotics saw such great improvements in their children’s behavior that they knew their children were taking the real thing.
Thus, problems arose during the ‘crossover’ point of this probiotics for autism study, where the two groups were supposed to switch medicines. Many of the parents whose children were taking the actual probiotics refused to make the switch as they wanted their autistic children to continue their improvement.
One parent said it was “heartbreaking” to have to stop their child taking it.
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