As if dealing with Alzheimer diseases and various forms of cognitive and memory lapses isn’t bad enough, scientists have recently discovered via a worrying scientific study that high-salt diets over long periods could potentially ruin us mentally and impair our cognitive abilities and memories.
Scientists at Weill Cornell Medicine have discovered a new connection between the brain and the ‘gut’. The study which was experimented on mice revealed that the group of mice which were fed with a diet of high-levels of salt suffered from dementia, cognitive impairment, and reduced blood flow in parts of the brain connected to memory and learning.
Study
In the new study with regards to the correlation between the brain and high-salt intake, mice were examined and administered with food containing a high amount (about 4 – 8 percent) of salt.
The quantity of salt quoted was equivalent to about 16 times more salt than the normal ration for a healthy diet. The high amount of salt was comparable to an extraordinarily high level of human salt consumption.
The Result
Results from the salt-intake study showed negative trends. In the mice subjects, there was a 28 percent drop in the flow of blood in the cortex. The result also recorded a 25 percent drop in the hippocampus after a period of just eight weeks.
The ‘high-salt’ consuming mice under study performed worse on various behavioural tests such as object recognition, nest building and maze test.
The scientists discovered that the impaired flow of blood in the brain was linked to a reduction of nitric oxide production. The nitric oxide is a gas generated by endothelial cells.
Corrective Procedure
The good news about the brains reaction to the high-salt dieting is that the effects are reversible; as after four weeks of returning to a healthy and balanced diet, the cerebral flow of blood normalizes.
A deeper analysis on the exact factors which triggers the reaction revealed that an adaptive immune reaction in the gut is actually responsible. The adaptive immune reaction was explained in the study that due to the high salt intake, the white blood cells responds by overproducing interleukin 17 (IL-17, which is a type of protein that reduces nitric oxide in the endothelial cells.
The fascinating aspect of the study was when the research scientists administered the high-salt affected mice with ROCK inhibitor Y27632, a drug which reduces the levels of IL-17, and prevents the reduction of nitric oxide production. The result of the drug was a positive response from the mice to the treatment, and it led to an improvement of cognitive and behavioural tests of the mice.
The first author of the study, Giuseppe Faraco pointed out that;
"The IL-17-ROCK pathway is an exciting target for future research in the causes of cognitive impairment. It appears to counteract the cerebrovascular and cognitive effects of a high-salt diet, and it also may benefit people with diseases and conditions associated with elevated IL-17 levels, such as multiple sclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis, inflammatory bowel disease and other autoimmune diseases."
Conclusion
The benefits highlighted from the analysis which revealed the “Interleukin 17” and “ROCK inhibitor Y27632” perspective, should ordinarily give us reasons to be excited. However, it must be noted that the study was just conducted in mice.
Also, for the mice experiment, the level of salt administered was extremely high. It should also be mentioned that as of today, the only cognitive impairment affecting humans as a result of salt-intake is basically related to hypertension and high-blood pressure which results in the term known as vascular dementia.
One of the points to note from the study is that the dementia observed in the mice subjects were irrespective of blood pressure.
Therefore, by relating the study and the effects to humans, it would translate to the fact that the intake of high levels of salt could damage our cognitive skills which build over time.
Study: Paper
Reference:
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