The impact of poor diet and early life stress on memory status

- High-fat and sugar diet and early life stress similarly impair memory.
- Poor diet choice following early life stress may have additive effects.
- Peripheral and brain inflammatory processes may mediate memory impairment.

In this review we summarise the implications of consuming a diet high in fat and sugar and experience of early adversity, also known as early life stress, on memory and their impacts on brain inflammatory and neurogenesis processes. Research shows that both such high energy diets and early life stress can produce similar, direct effects on memory performance; however the underpinning mechanism(s) are still unclear. There is strong clinical evidence showing that both insults are associated with increased peripheral inflammation. Hence, here, we propose a mechanism that links peripheral and brain inflammation induced defects in hippocampal neurogenesis in mediating the memory impairment following early life stress. Limited work has examined the consequences of combining a poor diet with early life stress, and here we propose an exacerbation of the effects on the brain when these factors are combined. Given that early life stressors such as childhood maltreatment, poverty and war are inevitable on a global scale, and that there is a rising obesity epidemic, driven by an increased intake of high energy food, research on the short and long-term effects of these factors and subsequently proper management approaches are of increasing importance.