Can going hungry as a child slow down cognitive decline in later years?
People who sometimes went hungry as children had slower cognitive decline once they were elderly than people who always had enough food to eat, according to a new study published in the December 11, 2012, print issue of Neurology, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology. “These results were unexpected because other studies have shown that people who experience adversity as children are more likely to have problems such as heart disease, cognitive development, mental illness and even lower cognitive functioning than people whose childhoods are free of adversity,” said study author Lisa L. Barnes, PhD, of Rush University Medical Center in Chicago.