Overview
- University College Cork researchers fed adult male rats a rotating high-fat, high-sugar cafeteria diet for 7.5 weeks, with half of each diet group given continuous access to running wheels.
- Voluntary running reduced despair-like behaviors on the poor diet and produced modest anxiolytic effects, while the diet itself did not markedly impair spatial learning or recognition memory.
- Exercise partially restored gut metabolites associated with mood regulation—anserine, indole-3-carboxylate, and deoxyinosine—that were disrupted by the cafeteria diet.
- Diet-induced increases in insulin and leptin were attenuated by running, with diet-dependent effects also observed for GLP-1, PYY, FGF-21, and glucagon.
- The cafeteria diet prevented the usual exercise-driven rise in hippocampal neurogenesis; the study, published Oct. 21 in Brain Medicine, notes male-only and short-duration limits and calls for follow-up work.