Childhood Obesity Adversely Affects Brain Function

Obesity is an excessive body fat tissue and is a common health issue across the globe. It has been found that childhood obesity negatively affects brain function.

According to the National Library of Medicine , obesity and dementia are somehow affiliated with each other as obesity is the risk factor for dementia. Dementia, on the other hand, comprises a wide range of progressive and acquired neurocognitive disorders.

Obesity is a health condition that is complex and the human brain is the most complicated organ. It appears to be associated with reduced brain function.

Obesity and Brain Function

Children are overweight when the Body Mass Index (BMI) is at or above the 85th percentile for others of the same age and sex. Such is defined as a BMI or above the 95th percentile, per the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

According to SBS Finnish , a study has followed the path of more than 1200 participants since 1985. They were then tested between the years 2017 and 2019 at the age of 39 to 50. The study has found out that those fitter in their youth were discovered in middle age to have speedier information processing abilities, attention, and overall cognitive function.

Terry Davidson, Ph.D., psychology professor and director of the Center for Behavioral Neuroscience at American University, states that:

"A variety of findings indicate that these diets and obesity in midlife increase the risk for late-life Alzheimer's disease or other dementias. Now there's some evidence that these [brain] pathologies are emerging earlier and may even be a cause of obesity, rather than an effect."

Risks of Being Obese

Obesity remains a major cause of premature death and illness and is also associated with an increase in the risk of chronic diseases, such as type 2 diabetes and cancer.

Approximately 70% of the obese population has complicated obesity which is defined as obesity with metabolic diseases or metabolic syndrome, such include insulin resistance, hypertension, abdominal obesity, and inflammation.

Epidemiologists at Brown University have conducted a study where children on the threshold of obesity or overweight in the first two years of life had lower perceptual reasoning and working memory score. The study discovered that IQ scores are lower for higher-weight children.

Researchers at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign have determined that in a study of 52 children ages 7 to 9, children who prefer saturated fats did worse on a hippocampus-related item and relational memory tasks or the ability to detect and remember co-relationships among things and ideas, per American Psychological Association .

Thus, researchers found that eating a diet high in omega-3 fatty acids promotes memory skills that are relational.

Such evidence demonstrates that obesity is related to cognitive deficits which refers to diminished or impaired mental and/or intellectual functioning. It has also been linked with functional and structural brain change in neuroimaging studies and is affiliated with a risk of developing Alzheimer's disease.