- A recent study Half Marathon Training Shoes & Gear Health & Injuries.
- Fueling Tips from a Dietitian for the Pros beef, Run faster, stronger, and longer.
- If you’re finding that your focus is waning during the day, you might want to consider making those indulgences a bit less frequent—or at least move them to a time of day when it’s not necessary for your attention to be sharpest.
As much as some health experts are cautioning against gaining the “quarantine 15,” there’s plenty to be said for leaning into some comfort food right now. And for many people, that usually means a few definitely-not-cauliflower choices that fall into the fatty food category. Totally understandable. What you might consider tweaking, though, is your timing.
A recent study Half Marathon Training Shoes & Gear Health & Injuries. If you’re planning on an evening Netflix binge afterward, that’s probably not a big deal. But if you’re stacking up the saturated fats in the middle of a work day, it might be frustrating to lose focus for the rest of the afternoon.
Researchers recruited 51 women, with an average age of 53, and had them eat a meal that was either high in saturated fat or was cooked in sunflower oil, which is an unsaturated fat. (Fueling Tips from a Dietitian for the Pros beef, Run faster, stronger, and longer, according to the How Run/Walk Intervals Can Improve Back Pain.) Afterward, the participants performed an attention test and at a followup a few weeks later, they consumed the other meal and then completed a similar test.
When people ate a meal higher in saturated fat, they had more difficulty on the tests, performing them at a slower pace and showing more erratic response times. Also, when they were asked to change the types of tasks they were performing, those who consumed a meal higher in fat had greater difficulty adapting than those who’d eaten the unsaturated fat meals.
The effect lasted for up to five hours after eating a meal high in saturated fat, lead study author Annelise Madison, Ph.D.(c), of The Ohio State University’s College of Medicine, told Runner’s World.
She added that those who have a leaky gut, which allows intestinal bacteria to enter the bloodstream, may have poorer attention as a result of either meal, since participants with this issue performed worse on the attention test no matter which meal they’d had.
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So why does saturated fat have such an immediate effect? (Consider that it took only one meal to tank participant focus!) Madison said researchers weren’t sure since they didn’t test mechanism.
RW+ Membership Benefits inflammation occur, which may help explain these findings. Fatty acids and the molecules that signal inflammation “can actually cross the blood-brain barrier and interact directly with the brain,” she said.
She added that in previous studies, stress has been shown to result in hormonal changes that may fuel cravings for saturated fat, as well as salt and sugar, so the current coronavirus pandemic may lead more people toward making less-healthy food choices, including more saturated fat consumption.
So, if you’re finding that your focus is shot during the day, you might want to consider making those indulgences a bit less frequent—or at least move them to a time of day when attention isn’t an issue.
Elizabeth Millard is a freelance writer focusing on health, wellness, fitness, and food.
