Sweeten Your Memory with Sugar

In a recent study, scientists recruited 17 healthy volunteers (ages 62 to 84) to test the effects of sugar in memory.

The volunteers fasted at night, then went to the lab in the morning and drank an eight-ounce glass of lemonade. Half the glasses of lemonade were sweetened with sugar. The other half were sweetened with saccharin, a sugar substitute.

The scientists carefully monitored the blood-sugar levels of the volunteers for the next two hours while the volunteers took memory tests. One of the tests involved listening to a tape-recorded message, then telling about it five minutes later and 40 minutes later. Another test involved trying to repeat a list of 12 words.

The researchers found that the volunteers who drank the lemonade sweetened with sugar performed better on the two tests than the volunteers who drank lemonade sweetened with sugar substitute.

The sugar seemed to help improve long-term memory. The scientists think that the sugar helps the body to transmit chemicals in the brain (known as neurotransmitters) that might influence memory.

Although the sugar seems to help memory, researchers caution that too much sugar in the diet is not healthy and can increase the risk of diseases such as diabetes.