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Understanding the link between dementia, brain health, and various metabolic disorders such as obesity is important and gives us important clues in guiding brain health particularly as we age.
Researchers around Amanda Lumsden of the University of South Australia have just published the results of a large-scale study and found some interesting correlations.
In this study they analysed data from 26,239 people in the UK Biobank and found that those with obesity related to liver stress, or to inflammation and kidney stress, had the most adverse brain findings. They measured associations of six diverse metabolic profiles and 39 cardiometabolic markers with MRI brain scan measures of brain volume, brain lesions, and iron accumulation, in order to identify early risk factors for dementia.
People with metabolic profiles linked to obesity were more likely to have adverse MRI profiles with:
- lower hippocampal volume (key memory centre)
- grey matter volumes (grey matter is related to general cognition)
- greater burden of brain lesions
- higher accumulation of iron
What was also surprising is the relationship to an individual’s Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR) — the BMR is how much energy your body uses when resting. This BMR is…
