Chances are you’ve probably never heard of methionine before, a type of amino acid.
If you want to lower your risk of memory loss, however, this could either make or break your diet.
According to new research presented at the Experimental Biology Annual Meeting in Boston, MA, eating a diet high in methionine, commonly found in meat and dairy products, could cause long-term memory loss.
Eating a diet with a moderate amount of methionine is beneficial, however, so simply avoiding it isn’t a good idea either, say researchers.
“Studies have shown that a healthy diet can boost memory,” write researchers in a press release for the American Physiological Society. “On the contrary, our study’s findings interestingly suggest that a diet rich in methionine—for example, red meat and some fish—can actually increase the risk for memory loss.”
For the study, researchers fed mice a diet high in methionine and low in other essential nutrients, such as folate, vitamin B6 and vitamin B12. This diet was continued for a total of 6 weeks.
After the testing period, researchers then assessed their memory by exposing them to a stimulant creating fear–naturally, mice with healthy brains would react negatively to this. However, the mice who had consumed the high methionine diet didn’t react at all, suggesting to researchers they had experienced long term memory loss.
Researchers suspected methionine was also suppressing the netrin gene, which caused their lack of reaction. Injecting their brains with netrin genes, the mice once again became fearful of the stimulant, proving that methionine was suppressing these genes and causing memory loss.
“Our findings suggest that an excess methionine diet caused memory impairment and hyper-methylation that affected netrin expression, which is a protein important in maintaining synaptic plasticity and involved in axonal guidance and neurogenesis,” say researchers. “We further introduced netrin intracerebrally into the mice to confirm the association of netrin with memory loss.”
While this test was performed on mice, which are physiologically similar to humans, it has yet to prove these same reactions could occur in humans. Researchers are hopeful these effects can be mimicked, however, and will attempt to prove it in future research.
For now, though, it doesn’t hurt to be cautious.
What This Means For You
Want a sharper brain? Avoiding methionine could become a potential treatment in the future, according to researchers. Luckily, lowering your exposure isn’t hard–simply lower how much red meat, fish, and eggs you eat on a weekly basis, which contain high levels of methionine. Be careful not to avoid this amino acid completely, however, as moderate amounts are needed to keep your body healthy.
Readers: Have you cut anything out of your diet recently?
Sources:
Study Links Methionine-Rich Diet to Increased Risk of Memory Loss – MedicalNewsToday.com
Diet Rich in Methionine–Found Most Abundantly in Eggs, Fish and Meats–May Promote Memory Loss (Press Release) – NewsWise.com
