Obesity Linked to Mental Decline

well, here we are as a nation. not only are we getting fatter, we're getting dumber as a result. discovery news reports:

"Cross-sectionally, a higher [Body Mass Index] was associated with lower cognitive scores after adjustment for age, sex, educational level, blood pressure, diabetes, and other psychosocial co-variables," reported Maxime Cournot, an epidemiologist at Toulouse University School of Medicine in France, and colleagues in the current issue of Neurology.

Lower cognitive scores in overweight and obese people were particularly apparent in a test involving the memorization of word lists. Participants were given a list of 16 words and asked to remember them immediately and again after a delay.

While people in the lowest BMI range (15 to 21.5) remembered on average 9 of 16 words, those in the highest range (27.7 to 45) remembered only seven words on average.

What's more, individuals with the highest BMIs showed greater cognitive decline five years later — their recall dropped from 44 percent to 37.5 percent on average. On the contrary, subjects in the low-BMI range maintained the same level of recall.

here's the full article.