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New research refutes the widespread belief that skipping Breakfast Or any other food during fasting compromises the ability to think.
A new study published by American Psychological Association, he has got intermittent fastingWhich involves not eating for several consecutive hours each day, often within a period of eight or ten hours, is unlikely to affect the thinking of most adults in the short term.
David Morrow, Associate Professor Psychology at the University of Auckland and lead author of the study said: “Although fasting has become trendy over the past few years, there is widespread concern, often reflected in common sayings, such as ‘When you’re hungry you’re not you’, that going without food can cause a sharp reduction in mental acuity.”
Discussing the study’s findings, he said: “We were certainly surprised in a sense, because our results contradict the widespread belief that fasting naturally compromises the ability to think.
“Across a wide range of different tasks, cognitive performance remained remarkably stable.
“Many people believe that skipping meals leads to an immediate decline in mental acuity, but our synthesis of evidence suggests otherwise.”
Researchers looked at 71 existing studies comparing cognitive performance in healthy adults who were either fasting or had recently eaten.
The study looked at factors such as memory recall, decision making, reaction speed and accuracy.
The data, published in the journal Psychological Bulletin, included 3,484 people.
The time spent fasting each day was over a range, averaging 12 hours.
“Our main conclusion was that there is generally no consistent evidence that short-term fasting impairs mental performance,” Dr. Morrow said.
“Fasted individuals performed remarkably similarly to those who had recently eaten, suggesting that cognitive function remains stable in the absence of food intake.”
He suggested that fasting could also be beneficial for the human body, and not just in terms of weight loss.
“Physiologically, fasting triggers significant metabolic changes,” he said.
“When glycogen stores are depleted, the body uses ketone bodies produced from fat tissue as an alternative energy source.
“Emerging evidence suggests that relying on ketones may provide wide-ranging health benefits, modulating hormonal systems and activating cellular repair processes associated with longevity.”
The researchers said there is some evidence that fasting for 12 hours may affect brain performance, and the effect also appeared to be on children, who were small in number in the study.
“The significant decline in children’s performance observed during fasting is consistent with earlier studies that highlighted the stable cognitive benefits of breakfast in younger age groups,” Dr. Morrow said.
An interesting finding, she said, is that poor performance on tasks often involved food-related tasks, such as viewing pictures of food or processing food-related words.
“Hunger can selectively divert cognitive resources or induce distraction only in food-relevant contexts, but general cognitive functioning remains largely stable,” he said.