A study by Johns Hopkins Medicine and NIH’s National Institute on Aging on 40 older adults with obesity and insulin resistance found that both intermittent fasting and a USDA-approved healthy diet improved brain function and metabolic health, with intermittent fasting showing slightly better results in cognitive improvements.
The results revealed that both types of diet plans had benefits regarding decreasing insulin resistance and improving cognition, with improvements in memory and executive function with both diets, but more strongly with the intermittent fasting diet, according to Mark Mattson, Ph.D., adjunct professor of neuroscience at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and former chief of the laboratory of neurosciences at the National Institute on Aging in Baltimore.
The researchers found that both diets had equally positive effects on reducing insulin resistance markers in extracellular vesicles, improving BrainAGE , and lowering glucose concentration in the brain. Reduced glucose concentration is a corollary of higher glucose use.