Obesity has negative effect on intelligence

In addition to being bad for your health, researchers have found that weight gain can have a negative impact on intelligence. A study published in this month’s Neurology finds that there’s a link between obesity and decreased intelligence. In a vocabulary recall test, subjects with a body mass index (BMI) of less than 20 were able to remember 56 percent of the vocabulary test words; subjects with a BMI over thirty were able to recall only 44 percent of the words. Five years later, that number decreased for obese test subjects while others retained the same level of recall. Reseachers postulate that hormones from excess fat damage cerebral cells, leading to decreased intelligence. "Another explanation could be that since obesity is a widely known cardiovascular risk factor, due to the thickening and hardening of the blood vessels, that the same happens with the arteries in the brain," said Dr Cournot, an assistant professor in clinical epidemiology at Toulouse University Hospital. For more on the study: - read this Telegraph article

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