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Brains of Overweight People Look Ten Years Older Than Those of Lean Peers, Says Report (theguardian.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: The brains of people who are obese or overweight appear to have aged an extra 10 years compared to their lean peers from middle age onwards, brain scanning research has revealed. The difference, scientists say, corresponds to a greater shrinkage in the volume of white matter, although they don't know the cause. It might be down to genes causing both brain-shrinking and obesity, or it could be that changes occurring in the brain lead to overeating. Either way, it does not appear to affect cognitive performance. White matter is tissue, composed of nerve fibers, that aids communication between different regions of the brain. The volume of white matter in a human brain increases during youth and then decreases with age for both lean people and those who are overweight or obese. But researchers have discovered that this shrinkage differs depending on a subject's BMI. "The overall message is that brains basically appear to be 10 years older if you are overweight or obese," said Lisa Ronan, first author of the study from the University of Cambridge. Despite a higher BMI being linked to a smaller volume of white matter, it did not appear to have any link to mental prowess, with no difference seen between lean and overweight or obese participants when they were subjected to IQ tests. Scientists from the University of Cambridge and Yale University have published their findings in the journal Neurobiology of Aging.
Well since you're supposed to get wiser with age, does this accelerate the wising-up process?
Trying to become famous by taking photos. Visit my homepage please.
It's because we're thinking more, stupid skinny people! The summary stated there was no difference on IQ test scores, but you know who designed and administered those tests? SKINNY PEOPLE!
Actually, the truth is we spend those extra brain-years thinking about food, so...
...they don't know the cause. It might be down to genes causing both brain-shrinking and obesity, or it could be that changes occurring in the brain lead to overeating.
Or it could be that overconsumption, especially of certain nutrients like animal fats, processed meats or refined sugars, also leads to a decline in brain health and tissue-loss. There is in fact research which demonstrates that, eg eating animal fat has a direct impact on people's congnitive performance, and there is a large number of other studies that demonstrate similar effects. Sorry, no citations, but it should be easy enough to find these things on, say, https://www.sciencedaily.com/i.... As far as I can judge, the case is pretty clear.
Yo momma so fat, her brain looks like it belongs to a Cro Magnon!
Drink lots of beer, you get fat and your brain shrinks.
There's been a lot of research (particularly on mice) which shows that _limited_ starving will increase the life expectancy of the test animals, right?
This looks like one possible factor in the explanation for that effect.
Terje
"almost all programming can be viewed as an exercise in caching"
There are way too many open questions to draw any conclusions from this either way. It could be that a decrease in white matter has effects on brain function that IQ tests don't measure; maybe that could lead to decisions that cause obesity. But on the other hand, there's a good chance that we build up a big reserve of white matter, way more than we actually need, and that performance is only affected when the levels drop below a low threshold. It could be that obesity itself is causing the decline. But on the other hand it could be that there's something in the kind of food that obese people tend to eat that causes it, and that if they somehow got obese from regular food it wouldn't happen. It could also be that some unknown third factor is causing both white matter decrease and obesity somehow. It could also be, however unlikely, that the kind of people who get obese also avoid particular kinds of brain taxation, leading it to atrophy to an extent. Or it could be that the two processes are not initially related, but increase each other over time. Or maybe it's a mix of all kinds of causes.
What we do know though, is that getting even a bit slimmer increases your health and happiness in a variety of ways, so even if it doesn't help your white matter, it's still a good idea.
So now, on top of missing dark matter, we're missing white matter too? Frak. Who the hell is in charge of keeping track of where this shit goes?!!!
Fascism: An authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization. See also: NAZI's
This study is shite - the only thing it shows is that fat people are discriminated against in the UK - look at the education level, the income level, so many confounding.
It was never meant to be such. Fit athletes can have a high BMI, it's mass (muscle is heavier than fat) against height.
Emphasis mine.
From CDC.
Overweight people fared just fine, and other studies show they live longer than underweight people. Perhaps it would be worth another look at just what is defined as "overweight"?
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
This doesn't seem out of line with other studies that link a more restricted caloric intake with youthfulness and better health.
I am not interested in articles about life extension advancements.
Fugly people are shitty people, news at 11.
Did anyone think that the cause-effect relation may be actually going in the reverse direction here? Their brain may be actually older due to other factors which makes them dumber and not caring about their weight so much?
From The Guardian:
Underweight people face significantly higher risk of dementia, study suggests
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https://www.theguardian.com/society/2015/apr/10/underweight-people-face-significantly-higher-risk-of-dementia-study-suggests
==========
Research involving health records of 2 million people condradicts current thinking, sparking surprise among authors and health experts
It has been wrongly claimed that obese people have a higher risk of dementia, say the authors from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.
What they are saying is: "You also look terrible on the inside... fatty."
My eyes reflect the stars and a smile lights up my face.
Well, Gee, Fellas, if there is NO DIFFERENCE in COGNITIVE FUNCTIONS, then this seems to be a bottom-feeding slashdot filler to justify a moderator's quota ! ! ! IF the brains appear 10 years older, but are still fully functional, then it should be a PLUS for being overweight.
redneck geek
Just because your IQ is not impacted doesn't mean the white matter doesn't serve other purposes.
I am currently trying to exercise and radically changed my diet. It is because exercise has as much if not more impact on depression than anti depressants according to studies! When you exercise, go on a ketone diet, or take anti depressants your body creates BDNF. BDNF causes neurons to grow more synapses and dendrites to repair the brain.
Fat and sediment people have shrunken Hippo Thalamus which controls mode, executive functions, and short term memory.
So yes as people as some people pointed out people become wiser, but many who for example who were once sharp programmers end up in management as their is cognitive decline and a difficulty learning new things.
http://saveie6.com/
Cost of living is going up, cost of health care, often more important in senior years is up, Pensions are a thing of the past, 401Ks are getting destroyed by the stock market, and Social Security is on life support and probably won;t even be there ianymore in 10-20 years. Who wants to keep living at that point....
So properties which an IQ test doesn't measure are affected. Then an IQ test is used to measure the effect. Genius! Related news: "Epilepsy suffering patients getting relief by gaining weight!" and "Gain weight and become autistic!"
I just have a more mature brain. Is there any correlation between white matter and "big bones"?
Look back up at my post, now look back down, you're on the Internet. Now look back up. I'm a signature.
I suppose another factor to consider is- How many of those overweight people are overweight due to excessive alcohol consumption? Because booze also destroys white matter in the brain.
I am prone towards gaining weight, genetically, because of my liver. My father's line always had liver problems.
110kg is thankfully the highest i've ever gotten due to my young age, and that was 2 weeks ago.
I decided to change my shit and get some discipline back in life. I've already lost 7kg by mainly drinking water, a homemade latte coffee with honey to keep me sane every 2 days, ate mainly a bowl of veggies (1 tomato, 1 cucumber, half a big onion, 1 bell pepper, 1 carrot) and 2 boiled eggs every day, with a handful of nuts every day. No deserts except that coffee, and no fruits. Only deviation is on sundays when i have BBQ with friends, and then i ate sparingly with mainly a focus on pure meat and salad while not even touching any sauces and only eating a stalk or 2 of french fry per bite.
This is without me doing any activity but seating in front of the computer or studying every day. Not even a proper walk through the city, i'm in cave mode.
If i added an hour of training every day, whether jogging or other shit, and also walked, i would have lost even more.
So every time i hear "muh genetics" from other landwhales, i call BULLSHIT. If anyone has bad genetics it is me. I am only waiting for the day i have to have an operation on my fucking liver like my father. Now i'm gonna start training next month and for the rest of my life, speed training. Those sessions where you spend 45 minutes doing non-stop all-out training instead of 2 hours of slow shit. Gonna put myself in a position where i can sustain training to my last day on this planet to avoid getting fat again.
And i'm already seeing a high positive return on my wallet, i'm not wasting time on food as i did before on a weekly basis.
That's all
Because I was born overweight, looked like the poster child for mongolism, and had a undiagnosed hearing lost in one ear, the school system classified me as being mentally retarded. Every year for eight years, I had annual evaluations of my mental abilities and consistently scored on the genius side of the scale. The evaluators were consistently surprised by the results but always called it as a "statistical fluke". I graduated the eighth grade with a college-level reading comprehension level and fifth grade skills in everything else. I skipped high school, went to community college, and took four years to get my A.A. degree in General Education with a 3.54GPA. A decade later I went back to school to get an A.S. degree in Computer Programming with a 4.00GPA while taking two classes per semester, working 60 hours per week and teaching Sunday school.
Today I'm 46YO, 5'-10" and 350 pounds. If my brain looks ten years older, I blame the public school system for making learning so difficult.
You could use that saved money to send your children to a university (say Stanford) for indoctrination by some Cultural Marxists. So that they hate their father later. Makes a hell of a sense.
The worst victims of the commies are those who are in awe of the education system, because their parents never studied.
The trick to handle it is to grow some serious cynicism about our elite.
Otherwise your daughter will convince herself of her "Gender issues" and go for self-castration.
Well said.
It cannot be that people in the western world always blame their lack of self discipline on somebody else.
"I only drink 1l of Sugar Water a day, but I am overweight. Somebody has manipulated the sugar !!!"
Folks, we need to change our behaviour, consume less Hollywood dreck, consume less rock music and be more conscious of ourselves.
Love ourselves, defend ourselves against the bullies of school and work. Quit a job before it affects our lives too much. Move to a different country if our masters treat us badly.
And first and foremost believe in ourselves and defend our brains against the shitfluence of the 1%.
Where fat shaming is also news for nerds now.
...buried deep in the summary:
"...it did not appear to have any link to mental prowess, with no difference seen between lean and overweight or obese participants..."
Note also that there is growing evidence that being a little overweight (not morbidly obese, mind you) is actually beneficial to your survival going into mid- and later-old-age, particularly if you have certain diseases (specifically, cancer).
-Styopa
If there's a correlation it could be the other way around: perhaps people with those specific brain characteristics are prone to eating more.
Eating more does not make you fat. Period. Being overweight is due to an imbalance in how your body regulates fat storage due to hormonal regulation of homeostasis. The main driver of this process is insulin. Insulin is directly affected by WHAT you eat, now how much. And more precisely, it is the amount of carbs in your diet. Sugars are particularly nasty in this regard.
It's a lot more complex than this, but that is a sufficient summary of the basics. Overeating or sedentary behavior does NOT make you fat. It's pretty much the other way around - becoming fat increases the amount of food you need and makes it more difficult to be physically active.
Good Calories Bad Calories (or Why We Get Fat: and what to do about it) and the Primal Blueprint are great books to read on this topic. And Grain Brain is good for how grains have been shown to impact our brains, which is more to the topic of this story.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
Do you really think eating 5000 calories a day but not eating grains won't make you gain weight? Eating more food, no matter what it is, will absolutely make you gain weight.
He tried to be cute
His Haiku was very lame
He is a douchebag.
"I say we take off, nuke the site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure."
Explains why I've been told I have an old soul all my life.
This research doesn't really come as a surprise to anyone studying medical nutrition, but it is interesting to see the hostile reaction that it incites in the comments. There is a lot of pouncing on the qualifiers that peer reviewers require, for example, they can't conclusively link the 10 years of missing white matter to decreased brain performance because it is simply beyond the scope of this particular study.
Obviously this doesn't mean there is no correlation, it just means that this further step (defining the direct correlation between brain scan data to patient observations and testing) was not part of this research study. Even if you did make that step, how would you define mental acuity 1:1 between patients when each participant has a vastly different educational background? That is a massive undertaking which would require a test group large enough that lifestyle and income adjusted participants could be compared.
Hence, they can't state that missing brain matter in these particular cases is linked to poor mental cognition because it wasn't within the scope of their research. Regardless, you certainly don't want to have your brain's condition reflecting 10 years of premature shrinkage under any circumstances.
Well... yes and no. 5000 calories is a lot, even in high-caloric foods. I think you would poop a lot and you wouldn't WANT to eat that much food because you wouldn't need to. The calorie argument is a red herring - it is a piece of information, but only a small one.
But I can tell you this. After eating high-fat (animal fats, butter, coconut oil, olive oil), no grains/legumes and virtually no sugar for a year, and not counting calories at all or exercising any more than I normally did, I lost 15 lbs and 2 inches off my waist. Actually that happened in the first 3 months, but I tracked it for a year. I went from 170 lbs to 155. If I were overweight, I would have lost a lot more. I have been eating this way for 4 years now, and after increasing my non-grain carbs a little I am at 160 with no effort. And I feel better than I ever have. There are other great effects of eating this way, such as reducing inflammation.
A year or so ago I did track what I ate and measured the fat/calories/sugar for a week. It was typical, and I made no adjustments to my diet.
The daily average came out to 2300 calories, 54 grams carbs, 186 grams fat, 18 grams sugar. I actually expected the calories to be higher, but that is what I found. I did actually think for a moment "oh no, I'm not eating enough... the average male should consume..." NO! That is generalized hogwash for the masses based on old information (I can't even call it science). Watch this video by Dr Peter Attia on Vimeo who talks about how our Dietary Guidelines are what they are. I know.. it's long, but it's really interesting. He has some really deep info on his website about how our diet and fat affects our cholesterol. Another fun fact - high cholesterol isn't bad. Another fun fact - half of all people who have heart attacks have normal cholesterol. Cholesterol is simply one thing, one factor in the grand scheme... but you know what doctors say... you need to lower it, I want you to take statins. (which are at the top of the most prescribed drug lists, in quantity and in dollars) But I digress...
I think it would be hard to eat 5000 calories in a day. I can see where someone doing vigorous work all day would require more food, but that is not saying the same thing as "just eat fewer calories and you will lose weight". I can only explain so much... I referenced some good books that go into far greater detail on the topic. Your body operates on hormones, and what you eat directly impacts that process. Calories do not. It's really that simple. But please, don't take my word for it, find those books and read them. The information is out there.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
Watch this video by Dr Peter Attia on Vimeo who talks about how our Dietary Guidelines are what they are. I know.. it's long, but it's really interesting. He has some really deep info on his website about how our diet and fat affects our cholesterol. Another fun fact - high cholesterol isn't bad. Another fun fact - half of all people who have heart attacks have normal cholesterol.
Peter Attia is an aggressive spokesperson for the meat industry whose primary means of persuasion is personally attacking other researchers. He exclusively fails to cite non-industry sponsored peer-reviewed scientific literature, and instead uses the tobacco-industry model of raising doubt to avoid the mountains of evidence and specific critiques that contradict his sales pitch. He's not a publishing scientists of any repute, and not someone you want to take health advice from. If your doctor wants you on a statin, it's time to start eating healthier because you have atherosclerosis. Yes, the industry is wrong to solely treat symptoms, but it is up to individuals to eat healthier. And the healthiest diet is one low in saturated fats and high in whole plant-based foods (including those starches you avoid).
Low carb diet fads sell a lot of books, and kill a lot of healthy people.
Incarcerated
It must be the white man's fault
I dindu nuffin!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mkoPq5AOCOA
He is not a published scientist of any repute. There, I think I covered the facts of your response. He is a medical doctor. But there are lots of those, right? What he does well is encourage people to read the research, and to become critical thinkers.
Your post reeks of some vendetta against him. If I had to put money on it, I would guess you are a vegetarian/vegan.
Fine, you don't like him there are other doctors and researchers out there who are researching the same things, and he references them in what he publishes and talks about. You probably already know that, but only want to stick to your ideology instead of looking at the science behind it.
If your doctor wants you on a statin, it's time to start eating healthier because you have atherosclerosis.
WOW. This is exactly what is wrong. Doctors prescribe statins because someone has high cholesterol, not atherosclerosis! And they only do that because they think that "high cholesterol is bad". I know what you are thinking - there is "good and bad" cholesterol... which is grossly over-simplified. That is precisely the shallow-minded unquestioning thinking that causes unhealthy FADS like low-fat diets to take root and prosper. And mis-information that statins are to treat atherosclerosis. Yet with one of the most prescribed drugs ever in statins, heart disease is still on the rise.
The causes of atherosclerosis are not definitively known. Seriously, look it up. Here are some key words for you though - oxidation and inflammation.
I know it's Attia's site, but read the content... it's a 10 part series that delves in to cholesterol and atherosclerosis... Jump to Part 10 that summarizes things very well. Sorry if there are big sciency words. Read back through all 10 posts. It is a few years old, but it's pretty clear this guy is not a marketing shill.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
Same haiku each day
Latent yearnings in the mind
He should try some cock