The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation recently funded an analysis of obesity in the United States. This analysis highlights the fact that obesity rates vary by state. The results are alarming. Approximately 75 percent of all Americans are currently overweight or obese. In 2021, more than 15 million children and adolescents and 172 million adults were overweight or obese. Texas, West Virginia, Mississippi, Kentucky, North and South Dakota, Iowa, Indiana, Arkansas, Alabama, Nebraska, and most states in the southeastern United States have low rates of overweight and obesity. The national prevalence was highest.
Effects of obesity on brain function
One reason this is a concern is that obesity affects brain function.
Higher BMI is consistently associated with poorer performance on working memory tasks. Eating poor quality food every day will not immediately impair your thinking ability, but if you eat poor quality food for many years and become obese, your daily cognitive abilities will be impaired. Obesity causes important areas of the brain to shrink, increasing the risk of cognitive decline. Increased fat accumulation has been demonstrated to have a direct negative impact on brain health through mechanisms driven by central inflammation and insulin resistance, with the most pronounced decreases in cognitive areas dependent on the prefrontal cortex and hippocampus. It is observed in Many laboratories around the world, including my own, have documented mechanisms that highlight how excessive obesity severely impairs overall cognitive function.
How does obesity contribute to brain atrophy and cognitive decline?A few years ago, it became clear that fat cells cause inflammation by releasing special proteins called cytokines. The more fat cells there are, the more cytokines are released into the blood.
I am researching the effects of cytokines in the brain. Several years ago, I published a series of studies demonstrating how these inflammatory proteins can shrink the areas of the brain used in the process of learning new things and recalling memories. The link between excess body fat and cognitive function is confirmed by studies showing that weight loss is associated with improved cognitive function.
Epidemic with national impact
What is the national impact of obesity on brain function?
Measuring body weight is a much easier task than estimating its effects on brain function. Each year, U.S. News & World Report publishes the state of education resources and outcomes in each state. The U.S. Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics reports that more than 50 percent of Americans between the ages of 16 and 74 do not read at a sixth-grade level. By 2024, the states with the lowest numbers of high school and college graduates (West Virginia, Mississippi, Arkansas, Louisiana, Kentucky, Oklahoma, Alabama, and Indiana) will also have the highest percentages of obese citizens. It is reported that it was high. Research shows that especially in states with the highest poverty levels (Mississippi, West Virginia, Arkansas, Louisiana, Kentucky, Alabama, Oklahoma, and Tennessee, according to the Census Bureau’s Annual Survey of School System Finances), , it has been suggested that there is a correlation between poverty and obesity.
The importance of food choices
The brain has evolved to reward eating foods with low nutritional value, especially fat, salt, and sugar (or other simple carbohydrates). These three nutrients were rarely part of the human diet for most of our evolutionary history. The brain has evolved multiple overlapping nervous systems (dopamine, endocannabinoids, and endogenous opioids) to reward fat, salt, and sugar for ingesting them every time they appear. I did. For example, many ancient human settlements were concentrated around natural salt deposits. Today, some of the most calorie-dense foods that are driving the obesity epidemic are also the least expensive, including fast food, processed meats, desserts, candy, fatty meats, white bread products, snacks, sugary drinks, alcohol, and condiments. is. Of course, poor people do not have access to nutritious food.
This risk factor is preventable. It’s not easy. The brain did not evolve to reduce food intake. The trainer on NBC’s hit TV show “The Biggest Loser” claimed that all you need to do to lose weight is exercise more. But Bob Harper, who has spent years helping severely obese people lose weight, has concluded that exercise is not the key. Your diet is most important. Harper not only helps her clients feel better and achieve their personal goals, but also helps them live longer, healthier lives. Most of his clients became obese because they consumed too many calories. If you go to the gym or spa, you’ll see that people who exercise often still carry a significant amount of body fat on top of their muscles, even as their muscles grow larger and stronger. Excess body fat accelerates aging and increases the risk of death as fat cells become inflamed.
Diet vs exercise therapy
Researchers recently investigated whether diet or exercise is most effective in reducing inflammation levels in overweight or obese women. After 12 months, the scientists concluded that the greatest weight loss and most significant reduction in reduced levels of inflammatory proteins were due to diet alone, not exercise. Evidence overwhelmingly shows that calorie restriction is the only effective, scientifically proven dietary intervention that can reduce weight, slow the aging process, and improve mental health.
