Making an effort to cut out those extra  calories could improve your memory by as much as 20 percent, in addition to helping you decrease your waistline. This creates a whole new perspective on the adage “you are what you eat!”

The study included 50 participants ages 50 to 72. These men and women were in the normal weight to overweight range. Participants were assigned to one of three groups. Members of one group were asked to decrease their calorie intake by 30 percent while eating foods they would normally consume but in smaller portions. The second group was not asked to decrease calorie intake, but instructed to boost the amount of healthy, unsaturated fat consumed by 20 percent. The third group was asked to make no dietary changes at all.

Researchers have shown keen interest in conducting studies that involve limiting calorie intake. Many animal studies have revealed that eating less promotes a longer, healthier life. However, human studies have had mixed results and the impact on cognitive function remains unclear. Some studies have linked self-supervised dieting to cognitive decline, although several experts believe that this was simply due to the dieters becoming preoccupied with thoughts of food and weight loss.

The researchers noted that they were surprised to find that participants in the unsaturated fat group experienced no improvement in memory. They suspect that this may have been due to the fact that most of the group members did not consume fish rich in omega-3 fatty acids. Hence, they are conducting a larger study requiring the unsaturated fat group to eat a lot of omega-3 fats.

The research group plans to study calorie restriction and omega-3 in elderly people who have mild cognitive impairment as the study results offer a route for exploring the role of insulin and inflammation on ageing-related cognitive decline.

If you’ve put on some extra weight lately for no apparent reason you may be able to attribute the gain to a highly infectious virus known as AD-36. With symptoms similar to the common cold—runny nose, sore throat, swollen glands—the virus is passed from person-to-person through coughs, sneezes, and dirty hands. First infecting the lungs, it then whisks around to other parts of the body entering fat cells. “When this virus goes to fat tissue it replicates, making more copies of itself and in the process increases the number of new fat cells, which may explain why the fat tissue expands and why people get fat when they are infected with this virus,” explains Professor Nikhil Dhurandhar of Pennington Biomedical Research Center in Louisiana, who has researched this theory for more than a decade.

His team has now documented more than 1,000 patients whose obesity appears to be linked to infection with the AD-36 virus. His latest study revealed that 33 percent of overweight adults have contracted the virus at some point in their lives, while the same is true for only 11 percent of lean adults. Even people of average weight tended to be heavier if they had been infected with AD-36. The resultant weight gain can last for three months, until the body has built up resistance to the virus.

Some experts agree that viruses might play a role in some obesity cases. “Adenovirus-36 has the ability to take stem cells and turn them into fat cells,” said Dr. Guilford Hartley, the medical director of the Hennepin Bariatric Program at HCMC. “After this infection, regardless of how slim or overweight you were before the infection, you are likely to have more trouble being overweight after the infection than before.” And with one in three obese adults contracting AD-36 at some point in the lives, the virus should be taken seriously. “I think it’s pretty clear that it contributes something to the epidemic of obesity,” he said.

Others are more skeptical and worry that portraying obesity as something you “catch” could obscure the biggest driver of obesity—overeating. “These associations may give some clues but they detract from the basic message that we all need to take more exercise and eat a bit less,” said Tony Barnett, professor of medicine at the University of Birmingham.

The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that there are more than a billion overweight adults globally and one-third of them are obese. Here in the U.S., the National Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates that about one-third of American adults are obese, as are 16 percent of children and adolescents aged 2 to 19. Obesity increases the risk of stroke, heart disease, type 2 diabetes and other illnesses.

We all know as mothers that we want to keep our babies as safe as possible. The bed is one place that needs special attention. Today, the rates of infant mortality that are due to accidental suffocation and strangulation in bed have quadrupled since the year 1984, adding to the already horrifying statistics of sids that occur in the crib.

While the rate of sudden infant death syndrome  has declined since 1984, the rate of sudden unexpected infant deaths has remained stagnant, as shown in a new study that will be published in the February edition of Pediatrics. The seeming contradictions in declines and increases in the deaths of infants are likely due to the changes in the way such tragedies that are investigated and classified, said Carrie K. Shapiro-Mendoza, Ph.D., a researcher from the CDC. She credits that very impressive decline in the cases of SIDS to a national “back to sleep” campaign that, among other things, urges that parents put their babies on their backs when it is time for bed.

The decline in the rates of SIDS has been offset by the increase in other sudden unexplained infant deaths, a new category that is called SUIDs. ASSB death, which is a subgroup of SUIDs, is said to be a leading cause of infant mortality. SUIDs, include all of the deaths attributed to accidental strangulation and suffocation, SIDS, and all unknown causes.

Shapiro-Mendoza said that infant deaths that are attributed to ASSB increased from 2.8 to 12.5 deaths for every 100,000 births between the years of 1984 and 2004. She also stated that such deaths increased dramatically between the years 1996 and 2004, which is a 14 percent average annual increase, a period in which mortality attributed to a decline in SIDS. These ASSB deaths are potentially preventable. She states that a “comprehensive” investigation of the site of death is critical in determining the exact cause of death. Often, the autopsy findings won’t be able to tell the difference between strangulation and physiological causes such as defects of the heart.