ET

ISSUE 2138 Monday 2 April 2001

Glucose and oxygen give good food for thought

By Celia Hall, Medical Editor

BREATHING oxygen or taking glucose just before using the brain can significantly increase ability, according to new research.

The study, which suggests that the brain responds well to a boost of oxygen or glucose just as muscle does, could have implications for treating Alzheimer's disease or chronic fatigue syndrome.

Dr Andrew Scholey, director of the human cognitive neuroscience unit at Northumbria University, Newcastle upon Tyne, said "thought fuel" did improve mental performance. "Most of us accept that the capacity of exercise can be enhanced by increasing the delivery of oxygen or glucose to muscles," he says today in the Psychologist journal.

The researchers set out to discover if the same was true of the brain. "The brain is extremely energetic. It weighs two per cent of body weight. Even sitting down it is using 20 or 30 per cent of body energy. It is an incredibly energetic organ but it has a design fault - essentially is stores very little glucose," Dr Scholey said yesterday.

Oxygen improved performance at the highest levels on the computer game Tetris, showing that breathing it in immediately before the task increased ability. Dr Scholey says that while oxygen could improve brain function it does not affect the functions in the brain associated with mood.

"We found no evidence of this in the oxygen and air breathing groups. Indeed following double blind experiments we routinely ask participants to indicate whether they think they received oxygen or air. They can't really tell. It seems individuals who frequent oxygen bars are experiencing a placebo effect," he says in the journal.

In another experiment, students were given a drink of 25 or 50g of glucose and asked to subtract seven from a number repeatedly. Both levels of glucose increased the response rate by two to three a minute. On average students achieved 20 to 30 responses in two minutes without the glucose drink.

Earlier work by Dr Scholey's department, reported last year, has shown that the food supplements ginseng and ginko biloba in difficult and easy brain tests - subtracting sevens and subtracting threes - had a positive effect. Ginseng speeded responses and ginko improved accuracy.

-- Anonymous, April 01, 2001