Recently, a United States psychologist revealed that a low carbohydrate diet could impair memory skills and even lead to memory loss episodes.

Holly A. Taylor of Tufts University stated that people who reduced to a minimum or completely eliminated carbohydrates from their meals had poor results where memory-related assignments were concerned, their performance coming to be more reduced than when they chose to cut down on calories intake and keep the carbohydrates as part of their diet.

In a Wednesday release, the aforementioned university informed that low-carb diets abated the brain’s energy source, adding that after one week of keeping to a low or no-carb diet, people’s memory skills became impaired, especially with regards to difficult tasks.

Our bodies break carbohydrates into glucose, which is the brain’s source of energy, along with glycogen (into which proteins break), but glycogen doesn’t benefit brain activity as much as glucose.

Nevertheless, when the carbs were added back to the diet, people’s cognition skills returned to normal, Taylor revealed. The latter’s findings were published earlier this year in the journal Appetite.

She and her fellow colleagues at the university conducted a study that included 19 women between the ages of 22 to 55, whom the team of researchers monitored from the moment they had gone on a low-carb weight loss plan resembling the Atkins diet or the low-calorie diet recommended by the American Dietetic Association.

All the women were tested in terms of long and short-term memory and attention both before they had begun dieting and one, two and three weeks after they had gone on the diets.