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

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In an as yet unpublished study, Thompson's team has shown that exercise, which improves cardiovascular health and blood flow, protects the very brain regions that had shrunk in the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."

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.