Calorie restriction or dietary restriction: how far they can protect the brain against neurodegenerative diseases?

Abstract

Finding the correct nutritional intervention is one of the biggest challenges in treating patients with neurodegenerative diseases. In general, these patients develop strong metabolic alterations, resulting in lower treatment efficacy and higher mortality rates. However, there are still many open questions regarding the effectiveness of dietary interventions in neurodiseases. Some studies have shown that a reduction in calorie intake activates key pathways that might be important for preventing or slowing down the progression of such diseases. However, it is still unclear whether these neuroprotective effects are associated with an overall reduction in calories (hypocaloric diet) or a specific nutrient restriction (diet restriction). Therefore, here we discuss how commonly or differently hypocaloric and restricted diets modulate signaling pathways and how these changes can protect the brain against neurodegenerative diseases.

Keywords: Alzheimer’s disease; Parkinson’s disease; diet therapy; dietary intervention; epilepsy; fasting; glucose restriction; hypocaloric diet; multiple sclerosis; stroke.

Figure 1

An illustrative relationship between dietary intake and neurological diseases. Neurological diseases such as epilepsy, Alzheimer, Parkinson, multiple sclerosis, and stroke can activate important catabolic pathways that result in undernutrition. In this context, a reduction of nutrients is harmful, might not show protective effects, and must be excluded from the non-pharmacological strategy. However, patients with unaltered nutritional conditions can undergo this approach, being a useful strategy for applying together with the current pharmacological interventions for such diseases.