Obese people have less brain tissue: Study

Researchers said that the brains of obese people tend to look 16 years older when measured up against those of lean people. What’s more is that overweight people possess four percent less brain tissue and their brains seem to age prematurely by eight years.

Obesity and brain degeneration
Paul Thompson, senior author of the study and a UCLA professor of neurology, said that the latest study results have been obtained after scanning the brains of 94 people. All these people were in their 70s, and the outcomes of their brain scans show “severe brain degeneration”.

The researchers discovered that there was a loss of brain tissue in the frontal and temporal lobes of obese people. These parts of the brain aid in planning and memory.

Also, tissue loss was observed in the anterior cingulate gyrus, which is responsible for concentration and executive functions. The hippocampus, which helps in maintaining a long-term memory, and basal ganglia that aids in movement, also got affected.

“The brains of obese people looked 16 years older than the brains of those who were lean and in overweight people looked eight years older,” Thompson said.

Thompson explained, “That’s a big loss of tissue and it depletes your cognitive reserves, putting you at much greater risk of Alzheimer’s and other diseases that attack the brain.”

He added, “But you can greatly reduce your risk for Alzheimer’s, if you can eat healthily and keep your weight under control.”

Obesity prevalent in epidemic proportion worldwide
As per statistics given by the World Health Organization (WHO), above 300 million people suffer from obesity across the globe. Not only this, another billion people are overweight.

The major reason behind obesity is a poor diet, especially dependence on processed foods.

There are many ill-effects of obesity and this includes a heightened risk of heart problems, Type 2 diabetes, hypertension, and in severe cases even different types of cancers. Obesity also causes a slowdown in sexual activity.

Body mass index (BMI)
Body mass index (BMI) is used to measure obesity. It is defined as the weight in kilograms divided by the square of the height in meters.

If a person has a BMI over 25, then he is said to be overweight. But if someone has a BMI above 30, he is termed as obese.

The National Institute on Aging, National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering, National Center for Research Resources, and the American Heart Association funded the current research.

The new study findings have been published in the online edition of the journal Human Brain Mapping.