Weight - does it affect cognition?

Can your excess weight affect your intelligence and memory?

I know most people, me included, look at weight as an optical problem. The ability to fit into clothes, for example.

But weight has a significant impact on cognition. Allow me to explain.

Cognition is the ability to think, comprehend, and solve complex problems. To reason.

So what is the connection between weight and cognition?

The most obvious connection is excess sugar. Your body uses energy to function. Energy comes in many forms. Food, blood sugar, stored fat.

So excess body fat will probably imply excess blood sugar. Excess blood sugar has been linked to dementia, Alzheimer’s and Parkinsons.

But there is something else afoot.

Excess body fat creates low grade inflammation in the body. Inflammation creates an immune response, which affects the blood-brain-barrier.

The barrier protects the brain, and so impairment affects brain performance directly.

The problem does not stop there.

Your ability to reason is also impaired. An area known as the prefrontal cortex, which seems to affect the decision to eat or not eat, is affected.

So you will find yourself making poor choices in nutrition. We have come back full circle. A problem that started with poor choices is forcing us to make worse ones.

In a meta study of over four thousand people, the researchers found a significant difference between obese people and the control group in the way the brain functioned.

So what can you do?

I still meet people who tell me that life is meant to be enjoyed. To eat, drink and make merry. I can only humbly say that the quality of life, at the very least, will be affected.

Sure, there will be a Warren Buffet who apparently drinks a beverage every day and seems to enjoy good health.

But after a decade of doing this, I can tell you with certainty that the difference between what we hear as stories and the truth is often stark.

Forget, Mr Buffet, take care of your own life.

Reach out to me on twitter @rbawri Instagram @riteshbawriofficial and YouTube at www.youtube.com/breatheagain