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Category: Brain Health
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The Simple Sign That Your Brain Is Shrinking
The sign that you have less gray matter in your brain.
The sign that you have less gray matter in your brain.
People who carry extra body fat around their bellies have smaller brains, new research concludes.
The study of almost 10,000 people found that those who have higher body-mass indexes and larger waists have less gray matter.
Brain shrinkage is linked to a higher risk of dementia and memory problems.
The study suggests that people with a healthier weight likely have more gray matter and, therefore, healthier brains.
Dr Mark Hamer, the study’s first author, said:
“Existing research has linked brain shrinkage to memory decline and a higher risk of dementia, but research on whether extra body fat is protective or detrimental to brain size has been inconclusive.
Our research looked at a large group of people and found obesity, specifically around the middle, may be linked with brain shrinkage.”
The study included 9,652 people, of whom 19% were obese.
They were given brain scans and their body fat was assessed.
The results showed that those with more body fat had less ‘gray matter’ in their brains.
Gray matter refers to brain cells, along with their accompanying structures: the part of the brain that processes information.
Dr Hamer said:
“While our study found obesity, especially around the middle, was associated with lower gray matter brain volumes, it’s unclear if abnormalities in brain structure lead to obesity or if obesity leads to these changes in the brain.
We also found links between obesity and shrinkage in specific regions of the brain.
This will need further research but it may be possible that someday regularly measuring BMI and waist-to-hip ratio may help determine brain health.”
People with BMIs over 30 are considered obese (search online for a BMI calculator).
Men with waist-to-hip ratios of 0.9 or greater are considered centrally obese.
The figure for women is 0.85.
The study was published in the journal Neurology (Hamer & Batty et al., 2019).
The Surprising Diet Linked To Staying Mentally Fit
The diet could reduce the risk of dementia and related neurodegenerative diseases.
The diet could reduce the risk of dementia and related neurodegenerative diseases.
A low-protein, high-carbohydrate diet is linked to staying mentally fit, new research suggests.
Mice given this unrestricted diet showed improvements in memory and learning as well as overall brain health.
Restricted diets have long shown promise in human longevity, but they are difficult for people to maintain.
This is one of the first studies to show that a low-protein, high-carbohydrate diet could be beneficial.
Mr Devin Wahl, the study’s lead author, said:
“We have close to 100 years of quality research extolling the benefits of calorie restriction as the most powerful diet to improve brain health and delay the onset of neurodegenerative disease in rodents.
However, the majority of people have a hard time restricting calories, especially in Western societies where food is so freely available.
It shows a lot of promise that we have been able to replicate the same kind of gene changes in the part of the brain responsible for memory that we also see when we severely restrict calories.”
Low protein, high-carbohydrate diets are not new.
They have been practiced for many centuries around the world.
Professor David Le Couteur, study co-author, said:
“The traditional diet of Okinawa is around nine percent protein, which is similar to our study, with sources including lean fish, soy and plants, with very little beef.
Interestingly, one of their main sources of carbohydrate is sweet potato.”
For the study, mice were fed complex carbs such as those found in cheese and milk.
The results showed that the diet was beneficial to the hippocampus, a structure in the brain critical for learning and memory.
Professor Le Couteur said:
“The hippocampus is usually the first part of the brain to deteriorate with neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s.
However, the low-protein high-carbohydrate diet appeared to promote hippocampus health and biology in the mice, on some measures to an even greater degree than those on the low-calorie diet.”
The study was published in the journal Cell Reports (Wahl et al., 2018).
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