Here is a startling reason to begin your weight-loss plan immediately!

Dr Paul Thompson, a professor of neurology at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA), and author Cyrus A. Raji, a medical student at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine have produced a report on how obesity affects your brain. The report has been published in the journal Human Brain Mapping.

The researchers analyzed brain scans of elderly people, and  found that obesity is linked to brain tissue loss, which implies severe brain degeneration. The research found that obese people have about 8 per cent less brain tissue in comparison to people of normal weight. Overweight people had 4 per cent less brain tissue. Obesity is known to increase the risk of several chronic diseases, including type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure and stroke. Now unfortunately loss of brain tissue can be added to the list. It’s another reason to consider a weight-loss plan for those in this position.

Dr Thompson said “The loss of this amount of brain tissue depletes your cognitive reserves, putting you at much greater risk of Alzheimer’s and other diseases that attack the brain. But you can greatly reduce your risk for Alzheimer’s if you can eat healthily and keep your weight under control.”

The research studied 94 people aged 70 and over. These people had already taken part in an earlier study called the Cardiovascular Health Cognition Study, and all the participants were healthy and none was cognitively impaired when assessed five years after the scans were taken.

Using a high resolution method called “tensor-based morphometry” that shows a detailed anatomy of the brain, they produced  images that examined the grey matter and the white matter to show the affected parts of each brain.

Obese participants were discovered to have lost brain tissue in parts of the brain important to planning and memory, attention and executive functions, long-term memory, and movement.

Those who were overweight showed brain loss in the basal ganglia, the corona radiata, the white matter, and the parietal lobe.  Age, gender and race had no apparent effect on the findings.

Dr Thompson said : “The brains of obese people looked 16 years older than the brains of those who were lean, and in overweight people looked 8 years older.”

You will be interested to know that, according to the World Health Organization statistics, over 300 million people worldwide are obese.

The serious campaign for weight-loss has not yet begun!

Weight Wise Man

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