Recently, I wrote a blog about a study showing that being fat makes you stupid and lazy. Now come reports that overweight and obese people have less brain tissue than lean people.
Scientists used brain scans to determine the amount of brain tissue in 94 people over the age of 70. Their findings appear online in the journal Human Brain Mapping. They found that obese individuals had 8 percent less brain tissue and their brains looked 16 years older than the brains of people at normal weights. Overweight people had 4 percent less brain tissue and their brains appeared eight years older.
The loss of tissue occurred in several important areas of the brain. In obese people, losses affected the following areas:
- Frontal lobes: Critical for planning, follow-through, and impulse control. Losing brain tissue here makes it harder for people to stick with a diet, which may explain why some people just keep getting fatter.
- Anterior cingulate gyrus: The brain’s gear shifter, allowing you to go from thought to thought. When this area is out of whack, it can cause you to get stuck on certain thoughts or compulsive behaviors, such as bingeing on chocolate chip cookies or double-decker burgers.
- Hippocampus: This is where long-term memories are processed.
- Temporal lobes: One of the brain’s memory centers.
- Basal ganglia: Sets anxiety level and is involved with movement.
In the overweight crowd, brain loss occurred in the following areas:
- Basal ganglia: See above.
- Corona radiata: White matter that speeds communication between different areas of the brain.
- Parietal lobe: Involved with sense of touch and direction.
Overall, the loss of brain tissue puts people at increased risk for Alzheimer’s disease, dementia, and other brain disorders. This doesn’t bode well for the 66 percent of Americans who are considered overweight or obese. About one-third of Americans fall tip the scales in the obese category.
The good news is that you can do something to improve brain function and help prevent Alzheimer’s disease and other types of brain problems. Getting your weight under control with a brain healthy diet and regular exercise can greatly reduce your risk. Don’t lose your brain!
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17 Comments
This information is very useful I am a health coach and do encourage my clients on diet, nutrition and exercise. The benefits of these activities are remarkable. I am glad to her about the consequesces of hypertension. I will pass on this article to my clients. It will make a solid impression.Thanks Jocelyn
Loved the article but when I went to print
it out only 3/4 on the left side of the
page was printed. Any insights as to how
I may print out the full page of the article?
Thanks for any help in this regard!
Thank you so much for informing us of all the latest research on the brain. I will pass this along to my patients, and hopefully it will motivate some healthy choices!
Wow 66 percent.. That is just bad, bad, bad.
The question I have is why do they have less brain tissue. Is this a result of obesity or is obesity a result of less brain tissue from the beginning?
Good information but it won’t print out correctly . Please shorten the length of the
sentence or reduce the size of the column on the left. Thank you
You can cut and paste the article into Word and it will print well. Just be sure to copy the name of the article, the author and the web address for proper credit to be given to Dr. Amen. Good Luck!
It sure would be nice to know if this is related to lower exercise activity or just being fat. Also if the recovery rate is related to activity level or weight reduction.
Could it be that people who become overweight or obese
perhaps were born with less brain tissue and this creates
the weight problem? Could it be they have lost brain tissue by dieting again and again on unhealthy and/or very low-calorie diets. Some only allowing 300 calories, 500 calories, or 600 calories.
Is there proof that getting down to normal weight will help
stop the loss of brain tissue? Or even encourage the growth of it?
Or is this just another piece that blames heavy or obese
folks for things beyond their control. This is a very complex issue. And scientists really don’t have much of a
clue about it really. They are just stabbing at possibilities.
Perhaps in ten or twenty years the truth will be discovered
and all of the theories of today will be proven to be bogus.
When you have such a tiny percent of people who are able
to keep their weight off after dieting, something like 97%,
there is something at play here that needs to be addressed or discovered. Especially in a culture like ours where it is humiliating to be large.
The more consistent the correlation between two or more event streams, then the more indication that one _is_ affecting the other, but we must remember that this affecting could be going in the _opposite_ direction from what we’d assumed. Thus, in this case, the sparser or older-seeming brain tissues of certain types might often be [as at least pointed out in the definitons of the ACG & of the frontal lobes] part of the _causes_ of becoming overweight, instead of only the _effects_, as even reputed psychomedical associations have so unthinkingly assumed.
(However, since a high insulin level suppresses healing- or rejuvenation- -signalling steroids, then, in _this_ case, that assumption of mainly just one of the two directions of causation must be probably in most cases correct as _well_, implying a two-way feedback loop, & thus leading to the fabled whirlpool of obesity & mental/emotional impotency.)
In reply to Gene T., I have selected, copied & then pasted to a blank word document to print these articles. Right click your mouse for select , etc.
Best regards, Terry
This is very interesting. My son has a mental illness and is on zyprexa and depakote. This medication works but it has made him gain 40 lbs. I worry about that
he is a smoker and is not that active.
I live in nj. Are there any close places to me that do this scan? Are there any times
where dr Amen travels and does these sscans? Lisa K.
Interestingly, in my mother’s Alzheimers facility in New Mexico, all the inmates were slim–some downright thin. My mother was an avid hiker, a Scrabble player, a crossword puzzle addict, an artist (oil paintings, calligraphy), a seamstress, an amazing knitter–all things that stimulate the brain–the ONE thing she did not do was drink much water. So, I still think there is WAY too much we do not know about our brains and Alzheimers. Thin, fit people get it too!
At various times you have commented on various foods being good or bad, such as avocados being good, ice cream bad. Would you consider writing a consolidated column with your list of goods and bads?
Thanks.
Would also like to know relation of activity, weight and brain. I believe I read that active overweight folks had better heart health than inactive “normal” weight folks.
And if this study was of 70-yr-olds, how did years of overweightness relate to amount of tissue lost?
Also, can people who were once obese get the brain tissue back.
Does your group have information on RADS? Do you have meds for it? I know a child that is being treated by a professional, but this person is treating the case like ADHD. This person says the actions are the same, and the treatments are the same. We are very confussed. In some way, the child is doing better. But the child continues to have poor social skills, and actions that are below the child’s age level.
The correlation between less brain mass and obsity is interesting but the material here alludes to causation rather than correlation. I would be rather careful of implying causation. A more likely mechanism of action is that acute stress may lead to both obesity and brain damage.