Improve your memory in just one week! Ketogenic diet has similar effects to fasting?

Wang Xin

Recently, researchers from the University of Chile and the Buck Institute for Research on Aging in the United States published a research paper in the journal Cell Reports Medicine, pointing out that a ketogenic diet can improve the memory of elderly mice. The principle is that β-hydroxybutyrate, the main ketone body produced in the ketogenic diet, can activate the protein kinase A signaling pathway, which is critical for the expression of synaptic proteins and can enhance the synaptic plasticity of hippocampal neurons, thereby improving memory ability. This study links the deep molecular mechanism of ketone bodies to improving brain aging and promoting memory. A week of ketogenic diet can cause changes at the molecular level of the brain.

The ketogenic diet generally refers to a diet that contains very low carbohydrates, moderate protein, and a large amount of fat. The ketogenic diet requires the intake of high-fat meats, non-starchy vegetables, nuts, dairy products, and seafood, and avoids the intake of sugary foods, including staple foods. This dietary pattern allows the human body to make full use of fat for energy, while the normal dietary pattern mainly uses carbohydrates for energy. The ketogenic diet causes the human body to produce a large number of ketone bodies. On the one hand, ketone bodies replace glucose as an energy substrate for the brain, and on the other hand, they act as signal molecules to induce neuroprotection.

The metabolic changes caused by the ketogenic diet are similar to those caused by "fasting". As early as 500 BC, people used "fasting" as a treatment for certain diseases. The Greek physician Hippocrates recorded that fasting is an effective anti-epileptic method. Since the 1920s, the medical community has discovered that a high-fat, low-carb ketogenic diet can achieve similar therapeutic effects as fasting, and has a beneficial effect on a variety of diseases such as epilepsy, depression, type 2 diabetes, tumors, obesity, and cardiovascular disease. The ketogenic diet is highly sought after by people who want to lose weight. It can quickly burn fat and reduce weight without causing a strong sense of hunger. If you resume a normal diet, your weight will rebound quickly.

Over the past few decades, clinical medical research has demonstrated the effect of the ketogenic diet on improving brain function. A study of 152 subjects with mild to moderate Alzheimer's disease conducted in the United States showed that the cognitive abilities of those on the ketogenic diet were significantly improved. Another controlled experiment of 52 subjects with mild cognitive impairment conducted in Canada showed that the measurement indicators of episodic memory, language, executive function and processing speed of those on the ketogenic diet improved, and the increase in ketone bodies in the brain was positively correlated with a variety of cognitive indicators. A study on mild to moderate Alzheimer's disease conducted in Japan found that the ketogenic diet had a positive effect on patients' language memory and processing speed.

The benefits of a ketogenic diet to the brain are believed to be related to ketone bodies improving the brain's energy supply and reducing oxidative stress and inflammatory responses in the brain. An animal experiment found that a ketogenic diet can reduce the deposition of amyloid-β and hyperphosphorylation of Tau protein. Another animal experiment also found that mice on a ketogenic diet not only had improved behavioral cognitive functions, but also reduced pathological changes in amyloid-β and Tau proteins in amygdala neural circuits and amygdala neurons. Although previous studies have explored the mechanism by which a ketogenic diet promotes memory, the signaling pathways at the molecular level are not clear, and more experiments are needed to explore in depth.

Although the ketogenic diet has many benefits, it also has many potential hazards: the ketogenic diet will cause the body to take in too little sugar, which can easily cause hypoglycemia; the unbalanced diet will affect gastrointestinal function and cause indigestion; the lack of certain vitamins and minerals can easily lead to vitamin deficiency dermatitis; the ketogenic diet may also cause ketoacidosis, induce kidney stones, osteoporosis, cardiovascular disease, etc. Therefore, the medical community does not recommend healthy people to adopt the ketogenic diet, and only recommends that patients with certain diseases undergo a certain degree of personalized ketogenic diet treatment under the guidance of professional doctors.

(The author is an associate professor at Central China Normal University and a member of the Science Popularization and Continuing Education Committee of the Chinese Society of Neuroscience)