Brains, Aging, and Obesity

The brain shrinks as you age, and all you can hope for is good genes and healthy habits to slow it down.

But what if good genes are there but healthy habits aren’t…and you gain a lot of weight, especially into middle age?

We can’t discern from this one study as to whether or not obesity causes brain shrinkage with age or brain shrinkage with age causes obesity. This was a cross-sectional study – looking at a group of people at one point in time – and not a longitudinal one – following a group of people over time. But the results do suggest at least one thing we can all attest to:

Good healthy eating and exercise habits, especially if they mitigate excessive weight gain, are good for the brain.

Brains of overweight people ‘ten years older’ than lean counterparts at middle-age