Is Obesity Bad For a Child's Brain?
- Hyunchan
- Dec 25, 2022
- 2 min read
Obesity is a complex disease that occurs when a person has excessive weight or body fat, affecting the overall health. One of the factors that indicate obesity is Body Mass Index, BMI for short, which is a person's weight in kilograms divided by the square of height in meters. A doctor will suggest a person is overweight when the BMI is greater than or equal to 25, and obese when greater than or equal to 30. The rate of obesity around the world has increased from westernized diets, with 13% of adults being obese and 39% overweight. In particular, child obesity has been a growing health problem; according to the CDC(Centers for Disease Control and Prevention), one in five American children are obese.
In the past, research in obese adults showed a positive correlation between obesity and poor brain health, but large-scale studies in children were lacking. As a result, a study team analyzed data acquired from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) research in September 2015, which includes 11,878 children ages 9-10 years from 21 centers across the U.S. First, they excluded children with disordered eating, neurodevelopmental and psychiatric diseases, or traumatic brain injury, and left a study group of 5,169 children with 51.9% of them female. Then the study team reviewed the BMI-z scores of those children. BMI-z score is the measure of relative weight adjusted for child age and sex, to analyze the data in a more standardized manner. They also used magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to examine the structural details in their brains.
After comparing those data with one another, the researchers concluded that higher weight in childhood is associated with poor brain health, with regard to the white and gray matter in the brain. White matter is found in the deeper tissues of the brain, and sends nerve signals between neurons and the spinal cord. It is in gray matter where the actual processing is done, which is transferred by white matter. What the researchers observed from the MRI images is that children with higher BMI-z scores were more likely to have specific differences in brain structure, including significant impairment to the integrity of their brain’s white matter. In particular, the parts of the brain with those differences included where cognitive control, motivation, and reward-based decision-making are involved.
Haley Bishoff, a registered dietician and the owner of Rūtsu Nutrition, though not involved in this research, said “this research helps shed light on why preventing childhood obesity is so important.” “Brain health and development is crucial during the early stages of life. If there are known risks between childhood obesity and poor cognitive function, it’s important to take preventative action,” she said. Children who is obese tend to eat more processed foods with high fat and sugar. Those foods also lack nutrients vital for brain development, such as protein, omega-3 fatty acids, and vitamin-Bs. Changing this diet into one with more fruits, vegetables, and lean proteins will help to prevent obesity. In addition to that, regular physical activities are important in terms of weight management.
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