Eat less, take coffee for better memory, thinner waistline

LONDON: If you are one of those who always wished to have a strong memory power or remained worried due to increasing waistline, the solution lies in eating less and taking a cup of coffee in everyday life, a new study has suggested.

Researchers have found eating less could help you remember more and skipping dessert and having an after-dinner coffee instead could also be good for your brain as well as the waistline, the Daily Mail reported.

The news comes from an Italian study into 'calorific restriction' - the idea that near-starvation rations boost health and extend life.

Scientists have long known of the phenomenon, but struggled to work out just what it is about severely cutting calories that improves health.

For the study, it was decided to focus on a protein called CREB1 that is known to be important to memory and learning. While conducting experiments on mice, researcher Giovambattista Pani showed that cutting calories boosted learning if the animals could still make CREB1. Besides, he also showed that cutting calories boosts the amount of the protein made in the brain.

It was also found the animals' calorie count was only cut by 25 to 30 percent but in human terms, this equates to about 600 calories a day.