Eating Junk Food Can Decrease Performance

I recently wrote about how overthinking can decrease performance. Well, here’s another thing that can decrease performance: eating junk food.

It is well established that eating the typical, high saturated fat, omega-6 vegetable oil, sugary Western diet can be a path to many health issues, including the never-popular erectile dysfunction (ED). The usual medical recommendation for preventing this body part from going on vacation has been to eat better, with compliance in that area being about as tardy as Mr. Happy has become when you want him there. Because of this, researchers Christopher Wingard and his colleagues at East Carolina University decided to look into the other half of the health equation, exercise, to see if that might be helpful for you and your better half to start smiling again. http://www.sarticles.net/article/lose-weight-delicious-and-easy
These scientists devised a study feeding poor, overworked lab rats an altered rat chow diet that simulated Western junk food fare. Over a 12-week period, half the rats ate this unhealthy high fat and sugar diet and half ate the usual healthy chow. Half of the animals in each group ran on a treadmill five days a week. At the end of this period, the rats were put to sleep and their erectile function or dysfunction was measured by electrically stimulating the nerves which increase blood flow and cause an erection.

(At least Woody Allen was awake for his experience with this.)

(Woody didn’t look too good after his stimulation, but at least he was smiling.)

The rats that ate the unhealthy Western diet but did not exercise developed erectile dysfunction. The somewhat smarter rats who foolishly still ate the poor diet but did exercise were able to function better. Best of all, the very wise rats who ate the healthy chow were, for the most part, able to avoid erectile dysfunction, unless they had inhibiting psychiatric issues like Woody Allen used to.

The happy scientists feel that these findings suggest that exercise should diminish these negative erectile effects of the Western diet provided that you do a lot of exercise. https://www.ag.ndsu.edu/forums/range/read.php?9,26992
“The finding that exercise prevents Western diet-associated erectile dysfunction and coronary artery disease progression translates to an intensively active lifestyle throughout the duration of the ‘junk food’ diet,” according to Wingard, but “it remains to be seen if a moderately active lifestyle, or an active lifestyle initiated after a prolonged duration of a sedentary lifestyle combined with a ‘junk food’ diet is effective at reversing functional impairment.”

As far as I know, Woody is now much less dysfunctional and happily active in this area of his life!
- See more at: http://www.clevelandstatecc.edu/talkgreen/viewthread/10651/