Obesity Linked To Lower Brain Function In Childhood, Study Claims

A study has revealed that the Children who are overweight or on the threshold of obesity in the first two years of life may grow up to have low brain functionality.

The studies lead by Nan Li, lead, a postdoctoral research associate in Brown’s Department of Epidemiology also disclosed that intelligence quotient (IQ) scores may be lower for higher-weight children than lean children when tested at ages five and eight.

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According to the epidemiologist, Obesity in adults has been linked with reduced discernment, due to its ability to dysregulate hormones acting in multiple brain regions.

But until now, despite the increasing prevalence of childhood obesity, there has been little or no research on whether weight status impacts how children learn, remember information and manage attention and impulses.

“The first few years of life are critical for cognition development, and we investigated whether early-life adiposity has an impact on cognitive abilities later in life,” said Nan Li.

However LI and his team found out that weight status did not appear to have any effect on the performance on some of the tests, but had three significant impacts.

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“Excess early-life adiposity was associated with lower IQ, perceptual reasoning and working memory scores at school-age,” Li said.

Li added that Perceptual reasoning tests, “assessed children’s ability to examine a problem, draw upon visual-motor and visual-spatial skills, organize their thoughts, create solutions and then test those solutions.” stating that further large-scale studies should be conducted as the study is limited.

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