The Reasons Why Obesity Can Damage Brain

Weight gain was not only affect your physical appearance, but also can affect brain function. Obesity has been proved can increase the risk of many diseases, including brain damage. This was revealed by the researchers based on several studies. How obesity can affect the brain function?

Here are 5 reason why obesity can affect brain function, as quoted from MyHealthNewsDaily, Thursday (08/03/2012), among others:

1. Obesity is damaging the memory
   Obesity may damage the memory, at least for women after menopause. A study has observed a memory test scores for 8745 women aged 65-79 years. The results of these studies have been published in the Journal of the American Geriatric Society July 14, 2011 edition.
   The researchers found that one point increase in Body Mass Index (BMI) was associated with 1 point decline on in memory tests. Hormone released by fat can interfere memory. These hormones can cause inflammation, which can affect cognition.
   
2. Changes in eating behavior during stress
   When peoples has excessive weight and doing a diet to lose weight, they can experience stress. When feeling stressed, people desire to eat will be growing. So the next day they will eat more food. Diet can affect how the brain response to stress. It is based on research has been published in the Journal of Neuroscience issue of December 1, 2011.
   
3. Obesity increases the risk of dementia
   Have more abdominal fat is associated with a decrease in total brain volume in middle-aged adults. It was submitted by the researchers according to study results published in the Annals of Neurology journal.
   It is possible that fat can trigger inflammation, which puts stress on the body and may affect the brain. This discovery suggests something about abdominal fat, also known as visceral fat. Visceral fat is fat that lies between the organs in the abdominal cavity. Visceral fat may play a role in reducing size of the brain. Visceral fat releases a unique hormones, which can affect the body in different way of hormones released by the subcutaneous fat. Previous studies have found that people with smaller brain volumes have higher risk for dementia, and tend to perform worse on cognitive tests.
    
4. Obesity can make more impulsive
   On child with obesity, brain that controls impulsive charge, called the orbitofrontal cortex, seems to decrease compared with children without fat. It is based on the results of study presented at the meeting of American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry in New York.
   Obesity is known to cause changes in immune system and increase inflammation in the body. Increased inflammation can affect the brain and causes obesity leads to inflammation, which damage certain parts of the brain. 
    
5. Obesity causes of food addiction
   Weight gain can affect the brain for the pleasure derived from sweet and fatty foods. So obesity can be pushed someone to eat more cake. The same effects seen in drug users, who ultimately need more cocaine or heroin in the long-term use.
   In a study published in the Journal of Neuroscience, researchers scanned the brains of women after drinking a milkshake. The researchers founded that those sweet drinks activated area known as the striatum.
   Half a year later, the researchers do the same experiment on those women, some of them have experienced an increase in body weight.