Obesity in Middle Age Could Lower IQ
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.
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