Save Your Brain - Lose Weight

[kuri]

Interesting study.

A new study finds obese people have 8 percent less brain tissue than normal-weight individuals. Their brains look 16 years older than the brains of lean individuals, researchers said today.

Those classified as overweight have 4 percent less brain tissue and their brains appear to have aged prematurely by 8 years.

The results, based on brain scans of 94 people in their 70s, represent "severe brain degeneration," said Paul Thompson, senior author of the study and a UCLA professor of neurology.

"That's a big loss of tissue and it depletes your cognitive reserves, putting you at much greater risk of Alzheimer's and other diseases that attack the brain," said Thompson. "But you can greatly reduce your risk for Alzheimer's, if you can eat healthily and keep your weight under control."

The findings are detailed in the online edition of the journal Human Brain Mapping.

[Aoife]

So, is this solely because of weight? or is it because of other diet, lifestyle and/or metabolic factors that lead people to be overweight?

[missjane]

Well, too bad it didn't work that way for my VERY SLIGHT of build mother. Never an overweight day in her life, and she'll be in a memory care assisted living home within a few weeks.

[Aoife]

There's some awsum new stuff out though about how stimulating environments can help rebuild memory pathways. So at least there's some hope.

[Katydid77]

94 people does not a medical fact make. Do these people live in the same area? Are there geographic, environmental, even ethnic similarities?

I just think a lot of these scientists are so excited about new finds that they release these 'findings' without real information.

The brain is mostly fat . . . that would sorta make it seem like fat people have the advantage.

[Fang]

But the brain is very much affected by oxygen deficiency, which I'm sure is an issue with mostly sedentary people. The whole system operates less efficiently when sedentary--toxins aren't eliminated as quickly, there's less oxygen flow everywhere, including the brain. I would assume that MOST people who are overweight/obese are mostly sedentary--I was.

[Snarlla]

Here's the paper if anyone is interested. I haven't read through it yet.

http://www.loni.ucla.edu/~thompson/ObesityBrain2009.pdf



And, just to comment on this

I just think a lot of these scientists are so excited about new finds that they release these 'findings' without real information.

It's often not the scientists who get overly excited, but the media that misreports and over reaches the conclusions of the research. If you look at the Discussion section of this paper you will see that they explain, in a lot of detail, the potential confounding factors of their research and what these findings might mean. This isn't my area, so I can't comment on the quality of the research (and I haven't read the materials and methods sections yet), but based on the discussion section, it looks like they were pretty careful not to over reach in their conclusions. What an excited reporter does with the information is kind of out of the researchers' hands at that point.