Weight Loss Can Help Boost Our Brain Function

The numerous health risks linked to being overweight and having extra pounds are very well known. Those include, first of all, very high  chances to suffer from serious cardiovascular diseases like a heart attack or a stroke, as well as from health conditions like type 2 diabetes, varicose veins and other serious vascular problems, rheumatoid arthritis and other problems with joints, improper bone health and various problems with spine, and many others. That is why the issues of weight loss are absolutely topical for modern society, and plenty of information is available in online or printed sources to help today’s people decrease their body mass and live a longer life. There is a huge number of various techniques to assist us treat or prevent obesity, starting from various diet plans or personal physical exercise programs, and ending up with surgical removal of extra fat layers (which is considered quite risky though).

These days, a new very important advantage of losing weight is reported. According to the findings of a research by a scientific team from the Umea University, Sweden, losing weight can not just prevent the mentioned serious health  problems, but also help us boost brain function and reduce our risks of suffering from Alzheimer’s disease and other related dementia like brain disorders. At that, the researchers underline  that the discovered phenomena is especially valid for aging women. For their experiments, they invited 20 female participants, overweight postmenopausal women, aged 61 in average. The study started with measuring the main indexes important for overweight people, including body fat composition and body mass index (BMI). Also, before  the experiment started, the participants were asked to pass some easy tests for episodic memory function: namely, the women were asked to remember the pairs of unknown faces, or remember the names of people appearing on computer screens.

After that, the researchers offered a group of the participants to go through a specially designed weight loss program, known as the Caveman diet or the Paleolithic diet. This is a special diet plan which is quite popular among some modern weight losers, and it includes daily consumption of 30 per cent carbs, 30 per cent proteins, and 40 per cent unsaturated fats. The other smaller group of the participants was offered to use a more traditional diet, including 55 per cent carbs, 30 per cent unsaturated fats, and 15 per cent protein in the daily diet plans. After 6 months of following the selected diet plans, the women were tested again, both for their physical condition (evaluating the effectiveness of their weight loss efforts) and changes in memory function (checking out if weight loss could help boost brain function). This time, the participants were asked to match facial images with the letters appearing along with the faces, with further findings the correct letter corresponding to the face that appears on the PC screen.

It turned out that after 6 months of the research, obesity level of the participants decreased, and the average body mass index of the study participants decreased from 32.1 to 29.2. A that, the average body mass of the participants went down from 85 kilos to 77 kilos. As the results of the memory tests have shown, memory performance of the participants was significantly improved after 6 months of diet. Therefore, the researchers came to the conclusions that weight loss can be a great tool to boost memory function and reduce the risks of dementia like brain disorders which are quite common in aging men and women in our times. Moreover, according to Andreas Pettersson, one of the study leaders, it is possible to successfully reverse the negative effects of aging on memory of aging people by using an effective weight loss program. “Our findings suggest that obesity-associated impairments in memory function are reversible, adding incentive for weight loss,” he said.

Author Info: Hi! My name is Carla and I am a 5th year medical student at HYMS. I am interested in alternative medicine and I have done months researching the topic of herbal medicine. Besides, I like interviewing people and learning more about their experiences with one or another type of herbal treatments. I am willing to contribute to this site with my knowledge, and I would be happy to help you out to the best of my ability with any specific questions or problems related to alternative medicine.

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