Obesity Can Harm the Brain

Obese people have 8 % less brain tissue than people with a normal weight, according to a new study.  Obesity can make the brain look 16 years older than the brain of lean people.

The study’s results, published in the journal Human Brain Mapping, show "severe brain degeneration" for obese people, as the senior author of the study, Paul Thompson, said.  "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."

Besides this new negative effect, Type 2 diabetes, heart disease, some type of cancer, and hypertension it was shown it also reduces sexual activity.  Obesity is just not something you can joke about.  Because of bad diets and increased reliance on highly processed foods more than 300 million people worldwide are obese and one billion are overweight, according to the World Health Organization.

Obese participants of the study lost brain tissue in the temporal and frontal lobes, which are areas of the brain critical for memory and planning.  Those are not the only parts affected - the anterior cingulate gyrus, hippocampus, and basal ganglia may also be damaged.

BMI (body mass index) helps you find out if you are fit, overweight, or obese.  If your BMI is higher than 25 it means you are overweight; if it is over 30 than you can consider yourself obese.

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