A good pair of dentures may fend off dementia. That’s the message from
Japanese researchers, who say that chewing helps prevent memory loss as we grow
old.
New memories are briefly stored in the hippocampus, a brain area critical for
learning. But as we age, hippocampal cells start to deteriorate and our
short-term memory gets worse. Elderly people with missing teeth often chew less,
too, and some studies have suggested that bad memory and tooth loss might be
linked.
To put this idea to the test, Minoru Onozuka of the Gifu University School of
Medicine in Japan and his colleagues…
