According to new research presented recently at FENS, the Forum of European Neuroscience meeting in Geneva, Switzerland ‘Sleep on it’ really is good advice.

Sleep experts have confirmed what many of us already probably know that a good night’s sleep can have a dramatic impact on the way the brain functions the next day and that memory in particular is boosted by sleep. It seems that sleep strengthens the connections between communicating nerve cells in the brain – a process thought to form the basis of learning and memory.

 

Scientists in Switzerland studied a group of volunteers who were taught a new skill or shown images they would later have to remember. The skill tasks included trying to follow a moving dot on a computer screen using a joy stick. One group of participants was then allowed to sleep normally for eight hours, while others were deprived of sleep or only permitted a nap. The next day they were asked to repeat the tasks or recall the images while their brains were scanned using a technique known as functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Those who had slept properly performed better, and this was reflected in their brain activity.

 

The results of this study prove that a period of sleep following a new experience can consolidate and improve subsequent effects of learning from the experience the next day.

A new study shows that skipping meals and eating on the go could increase your risk of fat around the middle, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, heart disease and diabetes.

The research from Sweden’s Karolinska Institute revealed that irregular eating has damaging effects even if a person’s diet is fairly healthy. The team studied 3,607 women and men aged 60 and tested them for signs of metabolic syndrome – a term doctors use to describe a cluster of factors that increase the risk of diabetes and heart disease. The research revealed that skipping meals increases the risk of insulin resistance – an early warning sign for diabetes – by up to 60 per cent. This can damage circulation and raise the risk of heart disease. The message of all this is clear: Keep your meal and snack times regular and consistent,  sit down when you eat and take your time. 

Most of us know about the importance of eating a healthy breakfast for weight management but now scientists have proved that not only is breakfast important for those who want to lose weight, the bigger the breakfast the better.

Researchers from the Hospital de Clinicas in Caracus, Venezuela, looked at how breakfasting habits affected the weight of almost 100 young, obese women. They found that those who ate around half of their daily calories first thing lose more weight in the long term than those who start the day with a small breakfast. And they are less likely to pile the pounds back on again. It is thought that eating a meal packed with healthy protein and whole grains helps cut cravings for sweet and starchy foods later in the day as well as boosting metabolism, or fat burning.

 

This study isn’t the first to make a link between a healthy, hearty breakfast and weight loss. Earlier this year a study of thousands of British women and men found that those who ate the biggest breakfast put on the least amount of weight over a five year period. Researchers concluded that skipping breakfast starves the body of nutrients and prompts it to store more of lunch and dinner as fat, whereas consuming more food at breakfast gives the body time to digest food more efficiently.