Just three days on a high-fat diet lead to cognitive impairment, and without weight gain and other metabolic changes, ScienceDaily reports.

Scientists from the Ohio State University have studied how a high-fat diet affects the body. They fed groups of young and elderly rats with food consisting of 60 percent fat, about the same percentage found in burgers from fast food establishments. The animals followed this diet for either three days or three months.

As expected, after three months, all the rats had metabolic problems, inflammation in the intestines, and changes in the composition of the microflora. However, the most unexpected thing happened in the brains of elderly animals. On the third day of the experiment, their memory and cognitive functions began to deteriorate.

Brain analysis has shown that fatty foods cause inflammation and disrupt the functioning of nerve cells. Memory suffered in two areas at once: the hippocampus, responsible for spatial memory, and the amygdala, associated with associative memory. Young rats did not encounter such problems — their bodies coped better with inflammation.

The results of the study emphasize how important it is to eat right in adulthood. Now scientists plan to study whether it is possible to reduce the harm of fatty foods to the brain with the help of special drugs or a diet. lenta.ru.