The more, the worse
Overweight provokes early aging of the brain
Yulia Vorobyova, Vesti, based on the materials of the University of Cambridge: Brains of overweight people 'ten years older' than lean counterparts at middle-age
Excess weight can accelerate brain aging – this is the conclusion made by a team of British and American scientists after a series of observations on the state of the nervous system in slim and obese people. It turned out that the brain of overweight people looks ten years older than people of the same age, but without problems with excess weight.
Scientists have become interested in how eating behavior, metabolic state, dietary habits and other factors associated with weight gain affect the aging process of the brain.
The team led by Lisa Ronan from the University of Cambridge (UK) studied brain scans of more than 500 Britons aged 20 to 87 years, obtained using a magnetic resonance imaging. The final analysis included 246 people with normal body weight, 150 with excess weight and 77 with obesity.
Neurophysiologists calculated and compared the volume of white matter, the thickness of the cortex and its surface area (statistics were adjusted for gender and total intracranial volume).
It turned out that differences in the structure of the brain do exist, and they begin to manifest themselves noticeably with age – usually after 40 years. In obese people, after this age mark, the brain ages more rapidly, and also decreases in volume. By the age of 50, its appearance and structure are identical to the brain of a 60-year-old man who has no problems with excess weight.
Interestingly, the process of withering practically does not affect the state of the cerebral cortex – its thickness and area are the same in people from different weight categories. There is also no difference in the parameters of gray matter and the level of intelligence.
The distribution of gray and white matter in the brain hemispheres of the same sex located at different depths of the "slices" of the subjects: (a) with normal weight (BMI 19.5), 56 years old, and (b) with obesity (BMI 43.4), 50 years old. Figure from an article in Neurobiology of Aging – VM.
"While we do not know why this happens, and we can only guess whether obesity causes accelerated "shrinkage" of the brain, or vice versa – those processes that cause the brain to age faster lead to obesity," Lisa Ronan comments on the study.
Now scientists intend to find out what is the cause and what is the consequence of this phenomenon. It is also necessary to check whether the premature brain atrophy is affected by a decrease in body weight (especially at the "critical" age – after 40).
According to the authors, these issues are extremely important, since the world's population has been noticeably gaining weight in recent years, and brain protection will become one of the main tasks of physicians in the near future.
The full text of the study is published in the Neurobiology of Aging (Ronan et al., Obesity associated with increased brain-age from mid-life).
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24.08.2016