A new study claims your brain can deteriorate at a rapid pace if you are overweight. Researchers from the University of Miami conducted the study.
For the study, the team measured the waistline and BMI of close to 1,289 participants. This was done at the beginning of the study and then again after six years. Those who had a BMI over 30 and a body mass index between 25 and 30 were characterized as being overweight. The team found participants with an extremely large waistline and high body mass index (BMI) also had thinning in the cortex of their brains. A thinner cortex has been found to have an association with Alzheimer’s disease.
Researchers also discovered the thinning was more pronounced in people younger than 65. The findings suggest that BMIs and waistlines have a strong link with brain decay. “Our results would indicate that being overweight or obese may accelerate ageing in the brain by at least a decade,” senior author Tatjana Rundek stated in a press release. Adding “These results are exciting because they raise the possibility that by losing weight, people may be able to stave off ageing of their brains and potentially the memory and thinking problems that can come along with brain ageing,”
Researchers now want to investigate this further to better understand the link. However, they do believe tackling obesity can be transformative and life-changing. "On a public health level, this lends more evidence for the notion that maintaining a healthy weight may preserve brain health later in life,” co-author of the study Michelle Caunca told a news portal.
The study's findings were originally published in the Neurology, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.
Global obesity is on the rise and causing many people to develop serious health issues. One study suggests exercise may be more crucial than diet when it comes to successfully losing the weight. “This study addresses the difficult question of why so many people struggle to keep weight off over a long period. By providing evidence that a group of successful weight-loss maintainers engages in high levels of physical activity to prevent weight regain - rather than chronically restricting their energy intake - is a step forward to clarifying the relationship between exercise and weight-loss maintenance,” study lead authorDanielle Ostendorf told a news portal. The findings of this study were originally published in the Journal of Obesity.
