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."

Comments

I also noticed a link

[Monkeedude1212]

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.

These morally chiding "correlation" studies

[elrous0]

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?

Re:These morally chiding "correlation" studies

[CannonballHead]

Is it any coincidence that the medical profession was once closely linked to the idea [thinkquest.org] that all illness was caused by immoral behavior?

Interestingly enough, in the Old Testament, Job's three friends made this mistake and were actually reprimanded for it. Calamity and "bad stuff" (including illness) does not, even in the Old Testament, mean judgment from God for immoral behavior.

Re:These morally chiding "correlation" studies

[b0ttle]

... the fact that the obese are often geographically concentrated in areas (like the American South) where public education is shit and poverty is high.

"American obesity rates are the highest in the world with 64% of adults being overweight or obese"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obesity_in_the_United_States

Re:These morally chiding "correlation" studies

[mcgrew]

drink more than thin people (getting shit on regularly can have that effect on people)

I haven't seen that to be the case; I don't see more fat people in bars than I do on the street. In fact, there are a higher percentage of fat people where I work than in my favorite bar, although that's probably because most of the people at work sit at a desk, while my favorite bar's clientelle is mostly construction workers.

and have crappier jobs than their normal-sized counterparts

The ones with the crappiest jobs usually are doing physical labor, and as such are generally a lot more fit than the average slashdotter, whether he's a skinny nerd or a fat nerd.

Why don't we just say that fat people are worse than Hitler and be done with it?

Gee, this early in the thread and Godwin has been invoked? I wish overweight people would be less self conscious about themselves. Except women -- "you're getting too skinny" can get you laid! I'm all for fat women, they're easier to seduce than hotties.

You know, the way we've already done with anyone who dares smoke anything other than marijuana (which is somehow magically good for you)

Actually, there have been studies showing benefits to potsmoking, including a greatly reduced risk of cancer among those who also smoke tobacco.

or who eats meat

Come on now, it's only a tiny but vocal minority against carnivorousness. Join PETA (People Eating Tasty Animals)

or who drives an SUV

OK, you got me there. Driving an SUV is an almost sure sign of a reduced intellect. They cost more to drive than any other class of vehicle, and more people die in them per passsenger mile than any other type of vehicle due to their poor handling and braking and high center of gravity and lack of crumple zones. SUV drivers drive badly not from lack of driving skill but because their vehicles suck. Plus, ask an SUV driver why they have it and they'll say "it carries so many passengers", but notice SUVs on the road and you'll see very few with more than the driver. If you carry passengers, get a minivan -- more passengers, better mileage, and they're the safest vehicles on the road.

But in the end, you have to die from something. When my grandmother was 95 she said to me "I don't know why people want to live to be a hindred, it ain't no fun bein' old!"

She was overweight when I was a kid, but when she reached her mid seventies or early eighties she started losing weight. Her mind was sharp as a tack until the day she died (at age 99).

Re:These morally chiding "correlation" studies

[natehoy]

I think the study adjusts for those factors perfectly well, in fact you're introducing some interesting possibilities as to an explanation for the link. The study (which is small, so we should obviously be cautious about drawing too many conclusions from it) only states that people who are obese appear to have less brain function. A few theories were forwarded to explain the link, but your theory is just as sound, and doesn't disprove the possible link.

Let's follow your chain of events for a moment. John is obese. John avoids his doctor because he's tired of being hassled about his weight. Fair enough - that's pretty common.

John is now in a negative feedback loop. He's receiving almost no advice on his diet, no encouragement to exercise, and probably is understandably demoralized from being called "fatty" and getting unwelcome advice from health freakazoids that he's likely to give up on health maintenance entirely. Poorer nutrition and less exercise mean that John's entire body is going to suffer, including the brain.

It's actually as good a theory as any. Obesity would have a significant correlation with people who are not caring for their overall health properly, and obesity can be both cause and effect in this case. John isn't a bad guy, he's just stuck in a rut, and he's headed for possible trouble.

I know John's story.

I'm 6' 3" and used to weigh very close to 300 pounds. I avoided my doctor for over a decade for the same reason John might.

It's tough to get started losing weight, and having a bunch of skinnyminnies around you crybabying about how you should get off your very large posterior and do something is not, repeat not, helpful. It's demoralizing, and makes the task of getting started look all that much harder.

It took a health scare for me to start the very long, very hard trail, and I'm now down to 215 (still mildly overweight, but I can ride my bike 30 miles a day without any problems). I wish terribly that I had learned my lesson an easier way, but I didn't, and I'm sure being obese for as long as I was will have long-term consequences. But I was where I was, and I understand how very hard it is to get started, and how the general attitude of society toward the obese does not make them want to help themselves. I wanted to just curl up with my Ben and Jerry's and donuts and leave me the hell alone.

I've encouraged several friends over the years to get up and just take short walks with me, and started a couple of them on the road to weight loss, but you've got to approach that sort of overture carefully, and have a sense for when your friend is ready to start helping themselves, then offer them some encouragement.

Now I get it

[mcgrew]

Fat women have always hit on me. Now I know why -- they're stupid!

However, from TFA:

Dr. Jonathan Friedman, an associate professor of surgery and neuroscience and experimental therapeutics at the Texas A&M Health Science Center College of Medicine noted that the causal relationship here is not clear.

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:

In an as yet unpublished study, Thompson's team has shown that exercise, which improves cardiovascular health and blood flow, protects the very brain regions that had shrunk in the current study. "The most strenuous kind of exercise can save about the same amount of brain tissue that is lost in the obese," he says. This indicates that it is blood flow that drives brain health, not the other way round. As these areas undergo the most remodelling throughout adult life, they may be more sensitive to any changes in oxygen supply and nutrients, Thompson suggests.

But Deborah Gustafson at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden, who previously found that overweight women had less brain tissue than their leaner counterparts, questions whether obesity is driving brain atrophy or vice versa. She points out that brain atrophy in the frontal and temporal lobes, which also control eating behaviour and metabolism, could cause weight gain. "There are not enough longitudinal data available for us to know which is the chicken and which is the egg."

The link between carbohydrate consumption and AGEs

[brian0918]

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.

WTF

[VisiX]

It is not obvious to fat people you insensitive clod!

Re:The link between carbohydrate consumption and A

[dogmatixpsych]

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."

Re:Bogus stats, however.

[GreenCow]

I sense that you may have some concern over the implications of this study. If you think these results troubling and wish to discredit them, consider asking for a wider study rather than calling it junk science. Their margin of error may be off, but I doubt it's by a significant enough amount to warrant being labeled 'Junk Science'