A new obesity study has shown that more women are becoming obese than men. (Photo : Getty Images/ Spencer Platt)
It is a known fact that human brains and the white matter within naturally shrinks over a period of time. However, a new study suggests that the damage could be 10 times more serious in people who are overweight.
A recent study conducted by a team of researchers from the Cambridge Centre for Ageing and Neuroscience suggests that being overweight can not only be harmful for the self-image of an individual, but also for the brains. The study, published in the journal Neurobiology of Aging suggests that obesity and the aging of the brain are connected to some extent.
During the study, the researchers analyzed a group of 473 people aged between 20 and 87. The subjects were divided into two groups - the first group has people who were lean, while overweight people were placed in the second group.
The researchers discovered that people who were overweight has much less white matter in the brain than their leaner counterparts. In fact, the team concluded that being overweight makes the brain look as much as 10 years older as compared to the brain of a leaner counterpart of the same age.
After that, the researchers went on to calculate the amount of white matter to see how it varies across age in the two groups of subjects. The team found that overweight individuals had a white matter volume comparable to that of a lean individual who was at least 10 years old to them.
Surprisingly, this trend was observed in people who were middle-aged and above. According to senior author Professor Paul Fletcher, this indicates that the brain is vulnerable to such changes around that time of life.
"We're living in an aging population, with increasing levels of obesity, so it's essential that we establish how these two factors might interact, since the consequences for health are potentially serious," Fletcher said, in a press statement.
Although the research team now knows the impact of obesity on the brain, they are still not sure why that happens. Shrinking of brain is a natural process, however, it is not clear why that process is accelerated in overweight and obese individuals.
In addition, the team is yet to find the overall implication of the reduction in white matter in the structure of the brain in overweight individuals.
The following video talks about white matter:
