Excess Weight, Poor Memory Linked

(WebMD)  If you're middle-aged and your memory's not what it used to be, check the bathroom scale. Excess weight could be sabotaging your brain power, a new study shows.

The study compared mental abilities to body mass index (BMI), a measurement of weight in relation to height used to define overweight and obesity. A BMI of 25 or more indicates overweight, and 30 or more is obese.

Middle-aged adults with a high BMI scored lower on memory and other mental ability tests than did middle-aged adults with a healthier body mass index, says Maxime Cournot, MD, assistant professor of clinical epidemiology at Toulouse University School of Medicine in France.

Cournot is a researcher for the study, published in the Oct. 10, 2006, issue of the journal Neurology.

"Our results can have an additional motivational effect to modify health habits in people who are overweight," Cournot tells WebMD. "Our conclusions stress the need to implement preventive programs to control obesity before cognitive impairment, as minor as it may be, [occurs]."

The study isn't the first to suggest this link, especially in the elderly, but Cournot's study is larger than some previous ones and included much younger adults.


The French Study

Cournot's team looked at the relationship between BMI and the ability to think, learn, and remember in 2,223 healthy men and women in France who were aged 32 to 62 when the study started in 1996. First, the participants' heights and weights were recorded, and they were divided into five BMI groups, ranging from lowest to highest BMI ranges.

Participants then took a series of tests, including being given a list of 16 words and asked to remember them either immediately or in delayed "free recall," writing down as many words as they could remember from the list. Another test was for selective attention; participants scanned a line of 58 alphabet characters to find a specific letter shown in the margin and cross it out.

Five years later, the entire process was repeated.

Among the word-list learning tests, the delayed recall one was most associated with BMI, Cournot says. Those with in the lowest range of BMI (15-21.5) remembered nine of 16 words, while those in the highest BMI range (27.7-45) could remember just seven. The results were linear -- so as BMI went up, the number of words remembered declined.

Those who had a higher BMI in 1996 tended to have a higher decline in mental abilities in 2001, Cournot says. There was no association between changes in BMI from 1996 to 2001 and functioning, but the participants overall did do better on the second round of tests. Cournot says that might be due to familiarity with the tests.


The Underlying Link

What's behind the link? "There are two strong hypotheses," Cournot says. Since obesity can lead to heart and blood vessel disease, including hardening of the blood vessels or atherosclerosis, the brain's blood vessels might be affected and not function as well.

Excess weight can also lead to poorer management of the body's insulin, and that could be affecting brain cells as well.


Other Experts Weigh In

Others familiar with the association say the new study makes sense. "It provides even more support for the ideas that there is a link between excess weight and brain function," says John Gunstad, PhD, an assistant professor of psychology at Kent State University in Kent, Ohio. He gave 486 healthy adults, aged 21 to 82, memory tests and also found that an obese BMI, at any age, reduced memory performance. In his study, published in March 2006 in the journal Eating and Weight Disorders, he found a relationship between obesity and reduced memory performance to be independent of a person's age.

Cournot's study "is consistent with the idea that Alzheimer's disease is the end of a process," says Gary Small, MD, director of the University of California, Los Angeles, Center on Aging and author of The Memory Bible. "I see a lot of people concerned about their memory," he says. "I always ask them, 'How is your diet?' and 'Do you exercise?'"


Take-Home Points

Obesity and dementia are both on the rise, and Cournot contends that managing obesity in middle-aged adults might help reduce dementia later.

"Try to find ways to manage your weight," Gunstad says. "We've known [for many years] that obesity is linked to high blood pressure and other problems. The fact that its impact on brain function may be independent [of other problems] is newer."

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SOURCES: Maxime Cournot, MD, assistant professor of clinical epidemiology, Toulouse University Hospital, France. John Gunstad, PhD, assistant professor of psychology, Kent State University, Kent, Ohio. Gary Small, MD, director, University of California Los Angeles Center on Aging. Neurology, Oct. 10, 2006; vol 67: pp 1208-1214.

By Kathleen Doheny
Reviewed by Louise Chang

[exusmcsgt]

With the plethora of medical evidence out there regarding the negative effects of obesity, I continue to be amazed at the huge number who obviously love food more than life itself.

Look around. How many obese 80 year olds do you see?

[cacashes]

I was eatin%u2019 my lunch %u2013 (Oyster Po-Boy%u2026they are soooo good from F**d%u2019s!) - when I ran across this article.

Now, my granny %u2013 who lived to be%u2026well, reeeeal old, was chubby, and let me tell you, she was sharp as tack. So was her sister, Aunt Jean Marie %u2013 she%u2019s the one that ran off with that club manager. Everybody talked about that for%u2026.%u201DDING!%u201D Ya%u2019ll %u2018scuse me a minute, my popcorn%u2019s done.

Now, back to Aunt Jean Marie, well, she was skinny as a rail, ate everything in sight, and dressed like floozy all her life. My mama told me once that%u2026hold up, ya%u2019ll. I need some %u201CCo%u2019Cola%u201D to wash this popcorn down%u2026

Back to Mama, well, she did the best she could with what she had, and that wasn%u2019t much, I can tell you. But back in the old days, you didn%u2019t need much to get by. Not like today when a body can hardly keep it all together%u2026%u201DKNOCK! KNOCK!%u201D Hang on, that%u2019s my pizza%u2026

Like I was saying, it%u2019s hard to keep a body up to code, so to speak, these days, what with health insurance costs and expensive medical tests and what not. Makes you wonder how those poor, poor people in third world countries get by. Hmmph, hmmph, hmmph%u2026

Anyway, I just wanted to get my two cents about rising health costs and the poor starving people all around the world before I took my break%u2026

[random_radar]

I was going to make a comment, but I forgot what it was...