Losing weight reduces your risk of dementia and improves your mental performance and fertility.
As previously explained, in the ABC of obesity’s health effects, A is arthritis, B is back pain and blood pressure, C is cancer, and D is diabetes. That leads to E. This is encephalopathy.
Encephalopathy means a disease of the brain. There is consistent data linking obesity in midlife to the risk of dementia later in life. Researchers found that people who are overweight have about a third higher risk of dementia, and people who are obese in middle age have about a 90% higher risk of dementia. However, the risks are not limited to future malfunctions. People who are overweight, at any age, don’t seem to think as clearly.
Obese participants were “found to exhibit widespread impairments in executive functions” of the brain, including working memory, decision-making, planning, cognitive flexibility, and verbal fluency. “From resisting temptation to keeping long-term goals in mind, executive functions play an important role in everyday life,” says a meta-analysis and review of 72 studies on the subject. .
Researchers say people can think about their obesity and the stigma associated with it as many as five times an hour, but the cognitive impairment doesn’t appear to be caused by distraction alone. There are structural brain differences between people of ideal weight and overweight people.
A review titled “Does your brain shrink as your waist grows?” He pointed out that gray matter atrophy can be seen in people of all ages with excess body fat. It is this reduction in brain volume that correlates with declines in executive function. As you can see below and at 1:42 of my video “The Effects of Obesity on Dementia, Brain Function, and Fertility,” when the integrity of the rest of the brain (white matter) is compromised, the brain can become weaker even in young adults and children. This suggests that aging is accelerated. Associated with obesity.
Cognitive impairment in young people suggests that there is something in obesity itself that is affecting brain function, rather than a later clinical outcome such as high blood pressure. Obesity-related inflammation and oxidative stress are thought to be the mechanisms underlying this executive dysfunction.
So does weight loss improve cognitive function? Based on a meta-analysis of 20 studies, researchers found that even moderate weight loss significantly improved mental performance across a variety of domains. I discovered that it is possible. However, no studies have yet been conducted to determine whether this will lead to normalization of Alzheimer’s disease risk.
Returning to the ABCs of the health effects of obesity, the F stands for Fertility, or failure to reproduce. One meta-analysis concluded that “overweight and obese people seeking fertility should be educated about the negative effects of obesity and the benefits of weight loss, including improved fertility.” Men can also suffer from decreased fertility. As you can see below and at 3:01 of my video, the heavier a man is, the greater his risk of having a low sperm count or being completely infertile. This may be due, in part, to the effect that excess body fat has on testosterone levels.
Fat is not only the primary site of estrogen production in postmenopausal women, but also in men. Enzymes found in body fat convert testosterone to estrogen. When men lose weight and go from obese to overweight, testosterone levels in the blood can increase by 13%.
A more serious cause of infertility in obese men is called the “hidden penis.” This condition, also described in the medical literature as a “hidden, buried, concealed, confined, inconspicuous” penis, occurs when excess fat in the penile area wraps around the penis (the base of the penis lies inside the pubic bone). ). . When the skin surface becomes moist and enveloping, chronic inflammatory dermatitis occurs, leading to scarring and may require surgical intervention.
In case you missed our previous blog posts, we discussed which knee replacements are best for treating osteoarthritis, and the effects of obesity on back pain, blood pressure, cancer, and diabetes.
We continue the topic of obesity and weight with a video in the related article below.
All of this and more is explained in detail in my book, How Not to Diet. And its cooking companion, How Not to Diet Cookbook, has over 100 delicious, weight-conscious recipes. Request one from your local library.
For more information on the health conditions discussed in this video, alzheimer’s disease, cognitionand fertility Topic page.
