WINE AND TURMERIC ARE MEMORY BOOSTERS

Drinking red wine or eating lots of grapes or adding a dash of turmeric with breakfast improve the memory, say two new researches.

A compound found in foods like red grapes, peanuts, and some berries may help ward off age-related memory decline. Resveratrol, a compound found in grapes and red wine, seems to improve memory and mood in older rats, one such study said, adding that it may also work for people.

Resveratrol has been widely touted for its potential to prevent heart disease, but researchers say it also has positive effects on the hippocampus, an area of the brain crucial to functions such as memory, learning, and mood.

Because both humans and animals show a decline in cognitive capacity after middle age, the findings may have implications for treating memory loss in the elderly. Researchers say resveratrol may even be able to help people afflicted with severe neurodegenerative conditions such as Alzheimer’s disease.

Published in Scientific Reports, the study reports that resveratrol offers apparent benefits in terms of learning, memory, and mood function in aged rats.

The second study says a single gram of turmeric in the morning can improve the memory of people in the very early stages of diabetes who are at risk of cognitive impairment. Turmeric is widely used in cooking, particularly in India and other parts of Asia. Its characteristic yellow color is due to curcumin, which accounts for 3 to 6 per cent of turmeric and has been shown by experimental studies to reduce the risk of dementia.

Because the world’s aging population means a rising incidence of conditions that predispose people to diabetes, which in turn is connected to dementia, the findings have particular significance, researchers say.

Early intervention can help reduce the burden, either by halting the disease or reducing its impact, says Mark Wahlqvist, emeritus professor at the Monash Asia Institute at Monash University.

Published in the Asia Pacific Journal of Clinical Nutrition, the study tested the working memory of men and women aged 60 or older in Taiwan who had recently been diagnosed with untreated pre-diabetes.

In the placebo-controlled study, subjects were given one gram of turmeric with an otherwise nutritionally bland breakfast of white bread. Their working memory was tested before and some hours after the meal. “We found that this modest addition to breakfast improved working memory over six hours in older people with pre-diabetes,” Wahlqvist says.

“Working memory is widely thought to be one of the most important mental faculties, critical for cognitive abilities such as planning, problem solving, and reasoning,” Wahlqvist added.