Counting calories does more than keep your waistline trim: It may also help you protect your brain against the ravages of aging.

A University of Florida study is the first to look at the effects of lifelong calorie-restricted diets on brain cells. It found that certain proteins linked to cell death that naturally increase with age were greatly reduced in the brains of rats with limited calorie intake.

The study also found that levels of a beneficial protein that provides protection against brain cell death were twice as high in older rats whose calorie intake was restricted by 40 percent.

The findings could be important in finding ways to limit memory loss and other mental declines that are a normal part of aging, and also for combating disorders such as Parkinson's and Alzheimer's diseases.

The study was published in the online edition of the journal of the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology.

Bo

Food for thought at best. The problem is they are measuring levels of proteins, not levels of memory loss. Calorie restriction obviously has extremely widespread effects, which may or may not cancel out any effects caused by these protein levels. These kinds of studies are necessary in the process of learning things in science, but they are so incredibly far away from telling us anything we can use in real life.