Being overweight ages the brain

In case you needed another reason to get motivated to lose weight, a study by the Cambridge Centre for Aging and Neuroscience has discovered that being overweight causes decreased brain function. The study looked at 473 individuals between the ages of 20 and 87 and the full results are published in the journal 'Neurobiology of Aging.'

The study found that overweight individuals had a widespread reduction in white matter compared to their leaner counterparts of the same age. White matter is tissue that connects areas of the brain for information to be communicated between areas. A reduction in white matters means slower and less complete communication across the surface of the brain.

When age was brought into the equation, the brain of a 50 year old overweight person looked similar to the brain of a lean 60 year old person. As we age our brains naturally shrink in size, so the 60 year old's brain was normal, but that means the overweight individual had a decrease in brain function that shouldn't have happened for another 10 years. This was only visible in those who were middle-age and older.

While there were clear differences in the volume of white matter between lean and overweight individuals, there was seemingly no connection between being overweight or obese and an individual’s cognitive abilities, as measured using a standard test similar to an IQ test.

“We don’t yet know the implications of these changes in brain structure. Clearly, this must be a starting point for us to explore in more depth the effects of weight, diet and exercise on the brain and memory,” Professor Sadaf Farooqi, from the Wellcome Trust–Medical Research Council Institute of Metabolic Science at Cambridge said.