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10.11.2009

Help! Protein diet shrinks your brain!

If you read science blogs and cultivate your muscularity you may have noticed a few alarming postings recently like the article we came across on NutraIngredients.com.

The posting is based on an animal study that Alzheimer researchers at the American Jefferson Medical College and Mount Sinai School of Medicine published in Molecular Degeneration. They studied TgCRND8 mice, which have been genetically modified to manufacture the human Alzheimer protein AB40. Researchers find high concentrations of AB40 in the brains of Alzheimer sufferers, in the form of plaques. Animals are used in the search for ways to treat Alzheimer's, which is what the Americans were doing.

Their question was whether altering the ratio of fats, carbohydrates and proteins in the diet might delay Alzheimer's.

For 14 weeks they gave their animal subjects either a diet containing a lot of fat (60 percent fat, 30 percent protein and 10 percent carbs), a diet containing a lot of protein (60 percent protein, 30 percent fat and 10 percent carbs), a diet containing a lot of carbohydrates (60 percent carbs, 30 percent protein and 10 percent fat) or a diet of 'standard chow' (virtually the same as the high-carb diet).

The protein diet had no effect on the dreaded AB40 peptide. The high-fat diet did increase the concentration of the Alzheimer protein. RC – standard diet; HP = high-protein diet; HF = high-fat diet; HC = high carbohydrate diet.

The brains of the mice that had been given a protein-rich diet, however, were "unexpectedly 5 per cent lower in weight than brains from all other mice" – as reported in the news reports. See the figure below.

Cause for alarm? Not really, if you read the whole study as well as the abstract, then you’ll come across the figure published below. This shows the weight of the mice.

OK, so the brains of the mice in the HP group were 5 percent lighter. But the mice in the HP group were at least 50 percent lighter than the mice in the other groups. Maybe that was the result of the slimming effect of the protein-rich diet. Protein rich food increases metabolism and reduces appetite.

Imagine: you weigh 80 kilograms. Someone tells you that your brain is 5 percent lighter than the brain of someone weighing 160 kilograms. Are you panicking?

Source:
Mol Neurodegener. 2009 Oct 21;4(1):40.