High-fat Diets Can Damage Your Brain

Eating a lot of fats may be good only for your tongue---not for your tummy, or even your brain.

High-fat diet can impact the brain's health and lead to changes in your behaviour, such as "anxiety, impaired memory, and repetitive behaviour," according to a new study published in the journal Biological Psychiatry.

The study says that even those who aren't fat should not indulge in fat foods, so that they can prevent themselves from psychiatric disorders, according to indianexpress.com.

High-fat diets can lead to alterations in health and behaviour, partly by changing the mix of bacteria in the gut, or the gut microbiome, said the researchers. "This paper suggests that high-fat diets impair brain health, in part, by disrupting the symbiotic relationship between humans and the microorganisms that occupy our gastrointestinal tracks," commented John Krystal, editor of Biological Psychiatry.

Fatty foods can harm the area of the brain that should monitor a person's appetite. This is why overweight people find it impossible to stick to a constant diet, according to theindependent.

The human microbiome is comprised of trillions of microorganisms, most of them living in the intestinal tract. The scientists from the Louisiana State University in the US resorted to tests to check how obesity-related microbiomes can alter behaviour and cognition even if obesity is not the result.

For the study, the researchers got some lean adult mice and given a normal diet, although they got a "transplant of gut microbiota" from the donor mice that had been fed either a high-fat or control diet.

The mice were then assessed to see how their behaviour and cognition altered. Those mice that got the microbiota due to a high-fat diet exhibited multiple disruptions in behaviour, along with heightened anxiety, impaired memory, and repetitive behaviour. Moreover, their bodies also showed detrimental effects, apart from high intestinal permeability and inflammatory markers.

The brain too showed some signs of swelling, which may have contributed to the behavioural changes, the researchers noted.

Hence, research shows that diet-induced alterations to the gut microbiome can change the brain function even if fat formation has not been induced.