Obesity and cognitive decline

Obese people are already at an increased risk of cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes and high blood pressure and new research suggests that they could also be at more risk of dementia too. Researchers from the University of California Los Angeles and the University of Pittsburgh scanned the brains of 94 people in their 70s who were healthy and didn't suffer from cognitive impairment. They found that the brains of overweight people were eight years 'older' and the brains of obese people 16 years older than those of people of normal weight. Obese people had 8% less brain tissue and overweight people 4% less. Obese people had less brain tissue in the frontal temporal lobes (important for planning and memory), the anterior cingulate gyrus (attention and executive functions), the hippocampus (long-term memory) and the basal ganglie (movement). Overweight people showed brain loss in the basal ganglia, the corna radiata, white matter and the pariental lobe

You can read more aobut this research at

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/08/090825090745.htm