The Effect of Celery on Aging Memory

Are you always forgetting where you put your keys? Do you struggle to remember names? As you get older, you may experience memory loss as memory deteriorates with age. Statistics show that a third of people over fifty years old suffer from some type of memory loss. There are different degrees of memory loss as part of ageing; from normal forgetfulness to mild cognitive impairment to forms of dementia and Alzheimer’s disease. Information is stored in different parts of the brain; recent memory, short-term memory and long term memory. Memory loss and its related cognitive functioning problems is due to inflammation in the brain. The inflammation causes changes in the brains ability to retain and retrieve memories for example the brain cells stop communicating with each other, there are a loss of neurons and parts of the brain like the hippocampus that are resposible for memory are vulnerable to age deterioration. These cognitive impairments causes trouble for the brain to process thoughts, retain short term memory and create new cells.

On the other hand, there has been a large amount of research into preventing memory loss due to ageing and research has found that there are many ways you can prevent memory loss. Research has found a strong link between nutrition and memory. They have discovered a chemical found in high concentrations in celery and peppers can halt memory loss in older people. It was also found that social relationships, exercise and brain challenging tasks also help reduce memory loss so these are highly recommended to people of the older age group.

In Psychology there has been loads of research into memory and memory loss with age. There are different types of memory; short-term memory and long-term memory. There are several factors that cause ageing brains to experience changes in the ability to retain and retrieve memories. The hippocampus is especially vulnerable to age-related deterioration, research has found that the hippocampus loses 5% of cells every decade. There’s a relative loss of neurons with age, which can affect the activity of brain chemicals called neurotransmitters and their receptors. An older person often experiences decreased blood flow to the brain and processes nutrients that enhance brain activity less efficiently than a younger person. Furthermore there has been a lot of research into what we eat as it has been found that there is a relationship between diet and memory (Benton .

A study conducted by Johnson et al (2010) showed that a chemical called luteolin found in many plants like celery, carrots and peppers reduces age related inflammation in the brain. The researchers tested this on adult 3-6 year old mice and two year old mice. They fed the mice a luteolin based diet for four weeks and tested them on their memory spatial awareness and measured levels of inflammation. Results found that the older mice on the luteolin