Slashdot Mirror
Obesity May Accelerate Brain Aging
natehoy writes "According to the US News and World Report, a recent study has shown a link between obesity and the loss of neurological tissue. The brains of elderly patients who were obese had on average 8% less tissue than their trimmer counterparts. Overweight patients had brains lighter by about 4%. This could have implications for the onset of dementia illnesses such as Alzheimer's. Just one more risk factor to add to the growing body (no pun intended) of reasons to try and stay trim."
Between Obesity and the loss of food in my kitchen.
But seriously - this seems like its leading to a "Overweight people aren't smart enough to care about their health" kind of thing.
Do they even TRY to adjust for the fact that fat people avoid getting health care most of their lives (because they're more likely to get tired of getting harassed by their doctor about their weight every time they go in for even a flu shot), drink more than thin people (getting shit on regularly can have that effect on people), and have crappier jobs than their normal-sized counterparts with the consequent lower incomes and inferior health care (because it's a lot harder to get hired)?
I'm not pretending that obesity has no effect on someone's health. But it just irks the hell out of me that these sensational studies always fail to adjust for these sorts of related factors in favor of the sensational (and grant whoring) headline of "Obesity correlates with such-and-such other calamity." I'm sure you could produce a study arguing that obesity makes you stupid too, by simply failing to adjust for the fact that the obese are often geographically concentrated in areas (like the American South) where public education is shit and poverty is high.
Why don't we just say that fat people are worse than Hitler and be done with it? You know, the way we've already done with anyone who dares smoke anything other than marijuana (which is somehow magically good for you), or who eats meat, or who drives an SUV (which some self-righteous asshole will probably link to sudden infant death syndrome in some future study), or any of the hundred other things that are going to kill us all any day now.
Is it any coincidence that the medical profession was once closely linked to the idea that all illness was caused by immoral behavior?
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Fat women have always hit on me. Now I know why -- they're stupid!
However, from TFA:
Another possibility is that The brains of overweight people have more receptors for the neurotransmitter serotonin than those of people of normal weight, suggesting that being overweight may be down to more than just eating habits and may have an origin in brain chemistry. Clearly, more study is warranted.
From the New Scientist article on the ssubject of big people with little brains:
Free Martian Whores!
This should be obvious. There is already a clear understanding of the cause of obesity via carbohydrate consumption, combined with the effects of said consumption on the production of advanced glycation endproducts (AGEs) in the brain, and their effect on cognitive function.
I have been overweight for over ten years now and this is the best reason to slim down I've heard yet. I take a great deal of pride in my intelligence, so anything that puts it at risk can not be tolerated.
Trust Your Technolust
Here is a link to the actual publication.
http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/fulltext/122539667/HTMLSTART
It always bothers me that these aren't provided, we can read the the actual results and not the news version!
Couch potatoism might be to blame. Our culture is based on watching TV and being on the computer (sniker) most of the time. Wanna help stem the bad health, go with your kids for a walk or hike. Walk the dog. Get offa the couch.
"The Brady Bunch is back...working homicide"
It is not obvious to fat people you insensitive clod!
If I may offer my opinion as someone who researches cognitive aging and the brain, I think the link (without actually reading the article) is likely due to cerebrovascular factors. People who are overweight often have high or highly varying blood pressure. They also often have arterosclerosis and all sorts of plaque build-up in the blood vessels. Basically their cardiovascular systems in general do not work as efficiently.
The brain is very power hungry. It needs virtually uninterrupted blood flow to function well. People who have reduced blood flow (efficiency) could have lower blood perfusion in the brain. Their neurons may just be slowly starved of enough oxygen and nutrients. People who are overweight are at increased risk for developing strokes, particularly so-called "silent strokes" that might not have apparent effects at first but could over time.
I don't think it's the obesity as much as the cardiovascular issues that are associated with it. I've seen the brains of older adults who have (uncontrolled or long-term) high blood pressure and by and large, they are not pretty. Their white matter is often pretty messed up. They often have larger ventricles (more brain atrophy) and do worse on cognitive tests.
In any case, being overweight is one of the worst things you can do to your overall health. Maybe not now, but in old age overweight (particularly obese) people are going to have a lot of problems - physical and cognitive. Again, I deal not with individuals as much as with groups of people so everything I say should be taken as "on average."
There is already a clear understanding of the cause of obesity via carbohydrate consumption, combined with the effects of said consumption on the production of advanced glycation endproducts (AGEs) in the brain, and their effect on cognitive function.
I'd be very cautious when using the words "clear understanding" with nearly anything in cognitive science. Scientists didn't even pay attention to neurotropic factors in the brain until relatively recently, and if you ignore factors that can cause neural growth (like... excercise - scientists are guessing that excercise is neurotropic since we need to often map out new areas when walking a lot) it's hard to make a statement that obsesity caused by eating too much is the cause of cognitive decline, as opposed to obesity caused by not exercising enough. In fact, I think that if you exercise a lot, obesity almost vanishes as a cause of a lot of problems.
You also have related issues like eating too much / not exercising enough contributes to diabetes, and having high blood glucose levels causes a wide variety of problems, such as damage to small blood vessels and a (likely related) decline in neural function.
But we're still in the stone age when it comes to all this kind of stuff.
Once upon a time, obesity was a sign of wealth. Food was different in those days and only by consuming large quantities of it could you hope to gain the wealthy appearance of obesity.
These days, the opposite is true. Our food is different in its content and in its richness. Average portion offered for sale are larger. And while it's true that people do less physical work, doing some basic calculation associated with calorie intake versus calorie burn and the increase of calorie burn with added exercise will reveal that exercise is not as effective at controlling weight as is controlling intake.
It is my observation that reducing the intake of food is the most significant thing anyone can do when attempting weight control and what's more, there is no "I have no time for it" excuse when attempting to do so. It is also my observation that reducing the intake of food is extremely difficult for a variety of reasons. Our habits and expectations are hard to change when ordering or preparing food. (for example, don't we all feel like a cheap-ass for not ordering that double-quarter-pounder meal deal instead of ordering from the dollar menu to get smaller portions?) Further, the content of our most available foods are a lot higher in calories than they have been in the past and this is largely due to increases in highly processed ingredients and preservatives and the like. While other nations have outlawed many of the more offensive ingredients, the U.S. has failed to issue as many restrictions which I believe is one of the most significant reasons that the U.S. is one of the most obese nations in the world today.
So what can we do? The best thing is to buy less and eat less. It takes a lot of effort to eat less, but in time your stomach will shrink and it will actually become difficult to eat as much as you are now accustomed to eating. This helps a lot, but it's the best answer for everyone and often leads to feelings of hunger and tiredness even after the adjustment in intake is made. (Keep in mind that the purpose of expensive and elective gastric alteration surgical is to serve this exact cause but people prefer to make these changes in their bodies rather than to make changes in their self-discipline.) Another thing is to start sending comments to your government representatives about fixing healthcare by fixing the problems with our food! (Imagine national healthcare costs plummeting because we aren't getting diabetes or any of the other health problems associated with obesity with the same frequency. That's what we see in nations with better controls over food content and since we're all the same species, we can expect similar results by enforcing similar rules.)
And before anyone start the criticism or attacks, let me just say that I am obese. I am working on it, but it's damned hard. I'm 200lbs (+/- 5lbs) when I should be 180lbs or less. I own more clothes that I cannot wear than clothes that I can. (I don't want to buy more "fat clothes" because that merely feeds the problem. I want to wear my old clothes.) And to better tie my commentary in with the original story, I feel a LOT less smart than I was when I was operating at my prime weight. And since I have been losing weight, I am feeling a lot more alert and aware than I have in a while and I sleep better and need less sleep as well. The benefits are obvious. And when the main course of action is simply to do less of what is causing the problem, it's not unreasonable or even expensive to pull off. I sure as hell haven't stopped eating at McDonald's... I just eat slightly more than the contents of a kid's meal instead of super-sizing everything.
I saw this quote: "the researchers studied brain images of 94 people in their 70s who had participated in an earlier study looking at cardiovascular health and cognition."
At that point, I said, "Stop. What a useless study." Look at the sample size again... 94?!?!? That has a roughly 10% margin of error built in to the sample size (at a 95% confidence interval). At least they included the sample size! ...and then there's the operative word "study...." That, word (in the singular, no less), gives me all sorts of warm fuzzies.
So, is that 8% (+/- 10%) less brain mass for obese elderly people or a range from 7.2% to 8.8% for obese elderly people, based on this sample and a 95% confidence interval? I'm thinking the former.
In statistics class, this was called by the name "statistical deception." Just because a single study of 94 people says so, don't believe it. It has a roughly 50% chance of being right -- or wrong (at a 100% confidence interval) but so do psychics, horoscopes, and fortune cookies.
Junk science prevails in the popular press. Anything sensational gets front-page headlines -- it gets grant money and sells news. It doesn't matter that the next study contradicts it, the next supports it, the next contradicts that one, and on and on the tennis match goes....
Once this has been peer reviewed numerous times with tens of thousands of people per study, call me. I'll be getting a snack, in the mean time.
Here's a couple of links to refresh people with the term "margin of error:"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margin_of_error
http://www.isixsigma.com/library/content/c040607a.asp
The idea that you can make a couple of simple changes and lose lots of weight is great for building a money milking industry on top of
Well, actually it was pretty easy for me, and everyone I've recommended this diet to has had similar results - 15-20 lbs dropped in under a month. I myself lost 40 lbs and have kept it off for a year. My weight loss was all without exercise - I didn't want to confound the data, so I avoided all exercise. I also didn't starve myself - I ate whenever I was hungry, and even then was eating 1400-2200 Calories a day. The diet was simply meats, fish, eggs, bacon, cheeses, dairy, some vegetables, minimal low-carb fruits (e.g. berries). For beverages: dry red wine, tea, coffee. Very simple.
I had been taking blood pressure medication for a couple years before this - my highest was 145/95. I eventually had to stop taking the medication - after about 20 lbs weight loss - because I was getting light headed and my blood pressure was dropping too low. Now I'm at normal blood pressure.
After a couple weeks on the diet, you lose all interest in bread and pasta. I don't remember the last time I had a slice of bread, or even bought a loaf of bread.
As for why it's so hard for everyone else to lose weight - all I can say is they're following bad advice. It's kind of disturbing that whether or not you are successful in weight loss can depend on which doctor you happen to have. I have seen doctors recommend the usual AMA/AHA/NIH nonsense about eating low-fat, and I have seen doctors who actually know what they're talking about, know all about the connection between carbohydrate (specifically fructose) ingestion and insulin resistance, ketosis, etc, and make good recommendations.
I have personally gotten both my parents on this diet, and at least three of my friends, and they've all had the same results - minimum 20 lbs dropped in a maximum of a month. Weight loss is actually pretty easy.