Do Not Forget about Your Calories; Otherwise, Your Calories Will Make You Forget

            If you are concerned about the amount of calories in your organism, you had better not forget about it; otherwise, this would not only make you a potential victim of a cardiac arrest, but it also may make you literally forget about it. A study conducted at Mount Sinai Medicine School in New York by a team of scientists led by Professor Giulio Pasinetti demonstrated that the excess of calories in the body may lead to develop Alzheimer’s disease.

            Professor Pasinetti and his group carried out an experiment using mice as test subjects; these rodents were divided in two groups in which they were fed throughout a period of over six months with low and high-calorie aliment, respectively. As a result, those mice that were provided with high calories presented symptoms similar to Alzheimer’s while the other group had fewer signs given the lower amount of beta-amyloid proteins, which are the responsible for this disease.

            At the same time that beta-amyloid proteins decrease, another group of proteins, known as sirtuins, expresses in calorie diets are controlled; sirtuins are the elements that diminish the symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease. Pasinetti and his team synthesised a sirtuin, SIRT1, and examined brain cells in which this protein was added to make sure that they work the same way as in calorie-restricted diets. The result: in certain way, they did.

            Taking this into account, do you think that you have been careful about your appetite? Would you change your potential memory loss for a bit of belly rumbling?

"I'm not out of my mind, I study English!"

Once you read this, you will be even more delighted about being students of English language. Being bilingual does not only help you in matters of job opportunities or being able to travel around the world, but also contributes to your intellectual wellbeing, for the reason that knowing a second language delays the symptoms of mental disorders such as dementia and Alzheimer’s. Even by acquiring a few conceptions from another language you have started increasing the activity of your brain.

As the Canadian psychologist Ellen Bialystok, a distinguished professor from York University, Toronto declares, being able to speak two or more languages brings advantages to cognitive processes and the increase in performance of one of the most essential areas of the brain, which is the executive control system; this mechanism makes us able to focus in relevant elements and data and ignore the banal details, along with give attention to more than one thing at a time and move on freely from one to another.

Children who practise more than one language and use their L₂ frequently can determine the main concerns of their tasks and multiple assignments more easily than those who only speak their mother tongue. Afterwards, the superior performance of the executive system leads to a better cognitive operation at elderly ages; one hundred and ten out of two hundred and one patients diagnosed with Alzheimer’s who were examined by scientists from the Rotman Research Institute in Toronto, Canada were bilingual and those were the ones whose symptoms took even five years longer to emerge.

Taking this into account, do you feel that it is in fact an honour for us to be able to study a second—or third—language?