Tag Archives: mental focus

January 24, 2022 · 9:43 pm

Researchers provide insight into how the brain multitasks while walking

New research turns the old idiom about not being able to walk and chew gum on its head. Scientists with the Del Monte Institute for Neuroscience at the University of Rochester have shown that the healthy brain is able to multitask while walking without sacrificing how either activity is accomplished.

“This research shows us that the brain is flexible and can take on additional burdens,” said David Richardson, an MD/PhD student in his fifth year in the Pathology & Cell Biology of Disease Program, and first author of the study recently published in the journal NeuroImage. “Our findings showed that the walking patterns of the participants improved when they performed a cognitive task at the same time, suggesting they were actually more stable while walking and performing the task than when they were solely focused on walking.”

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Our ability to focus may falter after eating one meal high in saturated fat

Fatty food may feel like a friend during these troubled times, but new research suggests that eating just one meal high in saturated fat can hinder our ability to concentrate — not great news for people whose diets have gone south while they’re working at home during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The study compared how 51 women performed on a test of their attention after they ate either a meal high in saturated fat or the same meal made with sunflower oil, which is high in unsaturated fat.

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Just one meal with saturated fat may cloud mental focus -Study

Fatty food may feel like a friend during these troubled times, but new research suggests that eating just one meal high in saturated fat can hinder our ability to concentrate – not great news for people whose diets have gone south while they’re working at home during the COVID-19 pandemic.

saturated-fat

The study compared how 51 women performed on a test of their attention after they ate either a meal high in saturated fat or the same meal made with sunflower oil, which is high in unsaturated fat. Continue reading →

Why You Should Quit Trying to Lose Weight

What’s that?! What kind of “… Food, Exercise and Living Longer” blog tells you to stop TRYING to lose weight? That’s the whole object isn’t it? Well, not exactly. Stick around, you might find out something worth your time.

I tried to lose weight for most of my life, my weight went up and it went down, but more up than down and I was overweight and out of shape more often than not. Some years ago I started writing this blog. At that time I had my weight down to 165 pounds. That was the lowest in about 15 years and down from a peak over 220 pounds. I felt happy about my success. But starting to write about eating healthy and controlling my weight changed something for me. I realized I was no longer struggling in private. I felt responsible to the blog’s readers and also to myself for eating intelligently and maintaining my good health and weight.

I started reading about aspects of weight control like serving size and portion control. I learned that a serving of pasta amounted to 220 calories, BUT, a single serving amounted to about the size of a fist or a baseball. This astonished my Italian eyes. To me a serving of pasta was a ten inch plate mounded over with pasta. So, if I planned to set an example for my blog followers, I needed to confine myself to true serving sizes.

This concept carried over into snacking, too. I would check the calories on a snack and see a reasonable 180 calories, but with my new awareness I would also read how many servings were in the package. If there were three servings included, that meant my eating the whole package, would amount to an outsized 540 calories, not the reasonable 180.

I didn’t realize it at the time, but I was no longer trying to lose weight. I was simply eating and choosing my diet in an intelligent fashion. I had begun doing it. Continue reading →