LONDON (Reuters Health) - Students worried about performing well in their exams could boost their chances of success simply by downing a sugar-containing drink while they're studying, new research suggests.

Tests carried out by researchers from the University of Lancaster and the University of Western Australia demonstrated that the sweet drink can improve short-term memory for at least 24 hours.

The results, presented at the annual conference of the British Psychological Society in Blackpool on Thursday, revealed student volunteers given a drink containing glucose, a type of sugar, outperformed those given a drink containing artificial sweeteners when asked to memorise and recall a list of words.

Even when they downed the drink after seeing the word list, the glucose group still had better recall than the other group.

Lead researcher Dr. Sandra Sunram-Lea said in a statement that glucose appears to aid the brain in storing and using memories.

"When we have a list of things to remember, our brain stores these memories during--and also after--we are exposed to the information. The provision of a glucose drink before or shortly after a learning task seems to improve the way that the memories are subsequently formed.

"Students, in particular, may benefit from taking glucose before or shortly after their lectures and during their revision."

The findings reinforce earlier studies suggesting that low blood sugar levels can affect attention span and concentration, by slowing the speed at which people process information. When the brain is deprived of glucose--its main source of energy--it struggles to perform well.

The object of the latest study was to see whether a positive glucose effect could be detected when the brain was being asked to do two tasks at once.

Researchers recruited 80 healthy, young adults and split them into two groups--one to receive a glucose drink, the other a drink containing artificial sweeteners.

Both groups were then asked to memorise a list of 20 words while carrying out a separate task at the same time. This was to see if glucose could have a beneficial effect when the brain is "competing" for resources.

After 30 minutes, the students were asked to recall as many of the 20 words as they could. Average recall in the glucose group was 15 words, compared with just 10 words in the artificial sweetner group.

When the researchers tested the volunteers again a day later, they found the same results, suggesting the glucose effects can last for some considerable time.

"Glucose significantly enhanced performance on spatial and working memory tasks," the authors noted in their report.

Reference Source 89

For more information on how to prevent other diseases, use
PreventDisease.com's "Quick Prevention Resources".