Excess Weight Hurts Mental Performance Now ... And It Gets Worse

New research links being overweight with substandard performance on tests of mental ability such as memory, learning, and attention, and with faster mental decline over time.

The researchers think their findings may also link being overweight in middle age with a higher risk of dementia, including Alzheimer's, later in life.

In a test of over 2,200 French adults, those with higher body mass indices (BMI) scored more poorly than their thinner counterparts on an initial test. And a follow-up study five years later revealed that their mental performance had declined more.

The French researchers think that either obesity is causing heart and artery disease, choking blood flow to the brain and lowering mental performance, or that insulin problems associated with obesity could be implicated.

Over the long term, the study fits with others that show correlations between poor health and dementia. While the mechanism of dementia is not yet fully understood, research has shown it to be associated with diseases such as coronary artery disease and diabetes, and poor health such as that caused by lack of exercise. Many researchers believe the unifying factor is that all decrease blood flow to the brain, and that could be an underlying cause of dementia.

The study will appear in the October 10, 2006 issue of Neurology.

---
Additional information here at WebMD.