Obesity linked to brain shrinkage, erectile dysfunction

The L.A. Times' science and health staff has recently been accused of an ongoing campaign against fat people. Commenting on a post Monday, reader Big Jim Slade predicted "tomorrow we'll have another fat assault on how breathing the same air as fat people is dangerous...Maybe we should waterboard them, eh?"

Don't shoot us, Big Jim: We're just the messengers!

But for those of you who share Big Jim's sense of persecution, let me say, I feel your pain. If you think it's hard reading our drumbeat of reporting on the health effects of obesity, imagine what it's like for, say, a significantly overweight health reporter to write this stuff on a daily basis. (Trust me, I'd rather be at the gym--though a controversial recent report suggests that won't help me lose any weight either.)

Which brings me to the latest crop of bad news on being obese--and there is just no way to sugarcoat this pair of studies, my friends: being fat makes your brain shrink and, if you are a man, your penis limp.

A new brain-imaging study by researchers at UCLA and the University of Pittsburgh finds that the brains of overweight and obese subjects were on average 4% and 8% smaller, respectively, than the brains of those who were at a healthy weight--evidence, according to UCLA neurology professor and study author Paul Thompson, of "severe brain degeneration."

For the obese--those with a BMI over 30--the news is particularly bad: the areas of significant observed shrinkage were the frontal temporal lobes, the seat of higher-order reasoning and judgment; the anterior cingulate gyrus, key to attention and decision-making as well; the hippocampus, where long-term memories are processed, and the basal ganglia, from which smooth movement is initiated.

Overweight people--those with a BMI over 25--also had shrinkage in the basal ganglia, as well as in the parietal lobe, where we integrate sensory input and position ourselves in space, and in the brain's white matter, which helps speed messages among regions of the brain that must work together for us to function properly.

After virtually weighing and measuring the brains of 94 subjects over age 70, the study authors concluded that the brains of the overweight appeared, on average, eight years older than those of subjects at healthy weight. Brains of the obese appeared 16 years older. While the subjects scanned in the study showed no outward signs of cognitive impairment at the time of the study, the study's authors predicted the premature aging and loss of brain volume they observed would put heavier subjects at greater risk of Alzheimer's disease and other degenerative brain diseases.

Why? Because a big, robust brain under attack by these diseases can often compensate for their ravages for some time--forestalling the onset of symptoms. But a shrunken brain is not so resilient. Memory loss, movement problems and cognitive deficits are far more likely to show up early for overweight and obese patients. This study is published online in the journal Human Brain Mapping.

The current issue of the "journalzine" Obesity and Weight Management--free online this month-- explores another, better-known fellow-traveler of obesity: erectile dysfunction. Erectile dysfunction is a common side effect of high blood pressure and atherosclerosis. Those conditions can lead to blockage of the major arteries that lead to the brain and the heart, causing stroke and heart attack, respectively. But they also can lead to "microvascular disease," including erectile dysfunction, say University of Colorado physician Adam Gilden Tsai and the University of Pittsburgh's Adam Sarwer.

Tsai and Sarwer present the case study of a 48-year-old man whose BMI is 32.6--considered "mildly obese," with erectile dysfunction that is not relieved by the use of tadalafil, the erectile dysfunction medication better known as Cialis.

There is, at least, some good news: A study expected to be published next month in the Lancet by the UCLA-Pitt researchers that observed brain shrinkage is expected to suggest that physical exercise can help spare even the obese some of the consequences of their excess weight. And, the patient with erectile dysfunction was medicated for his high blood pressure and, after dietary counseling, lost 4.6% of his body weight--just under 10 pounds. "The patient has been able to achieve adequate erections with the use of ED medication as needed," the authors report.

Now that's a happy ending.

-- Melissa Healy

Comments

[Brian]

"The areas of significant observed shrinkage were the frontal temporal lobes, the seat of higher-order reasoning and judgment; the anterior cingulate gyrus, key to attention and decision-making as well; the hippocampus, where long-term memories are processed, and the basal ganglia, from which smooth movement is initiated."

It is inaccurate to say that "being fat makes your brain shrink."

Maybe some obesity is caused by a brain disorder, instead of the other way around? Correlation does not prove causation in either direction. It could also be the case that a problem with the brain leads to impaired decision-making; or the lack of "smooth movement" makes exercise less pleasant and so people gain weight. Or there could be some other larger health problem, of which obesity and brain shrinkage are both symptoms.

If you're going to be the messenger, get the message right. No wonder so many people are upset!

[Cass Elliot III]

I have a suggestion. Follow the peer reviewed journals.Just as they ask their authors to disclose relationships with pharmaceutical companies, have your authors disclose their BMI, height, and weight when they write these articles. Maybe you'd publish more compelling content. You should make your moralism judgments more transparent.

[Karissa]

Brian,

Read the actual study because the researchers address your 'correlation/causality' concerns. You should be well-read on the actual material before lahing out on the media which is trained to give a specific perspective on an objectively conducted study. The study literally tells you that the subjects were cognitively normal at the time of the study and for at least 5 years following the study; so you can't conclude that the brain degeneration caused the obesity.

[Norman]

How many of those overweight and obese brain imaging subjects were football players?

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/summary/sci;325/5941/670

[Sheesh]

Reading these comments, I think, sheesh, maybe being fat makes you hypersensitive and stupid too. I don't hear alcoholics suggesting that maybe their livers were shot before they started drinking, and that having a bad liver drove them to drink. And why? Because studies track the liver from when it was healthy to when it wasn't, just like these studies, if you actually read them instead of just bitching and eating butter, tracks brain degeneration and weight.

http://www.loni.ucla.edu/~thompson/ObesityBrain2009.pdf

Read the paper before you shoot the messenger. She reported their conclusion, that being fat makes your brain shrink, accurately. You're correct in that correlation doesn't prove causation, but no one claimed to have indisputably proven that being fat makes your brain shrink, just that there is a big KFC bucket full of evidence that strongly justifies that conclusion in the medical community's eyes. And that's how science works, you stupid bitchy fatsos; there are no proofs. If you're convinced it's bogus until you see an analytic proof, then keep living in the clouds, maybe you'll find a ham up there.

And I don't see any moralizing into this article. The reporter accurately summarized the medical research which you whiners didn't even read.

[AB]

What I find so interesting about alllll these studies, is for the most part, they are nothing more than expensive lessons in common sense.

Obesity is a traumatic attack on the body, though a slow one, that changes basic abilities, from the function of the penis to the function of the brain to the function of the joints etc, everything body is being attacked and reacting according to the impact. A car crash is no different, but yet we never doubt, as we do here with the comments posted, the impact of a severe head on collision. Carrying 50 extra pounds of fat is a severe head on collision, in slo-motion.

Just like studies that tell us processed food and high corn syrup cause obesity, as do video games and depression. Nothing but common sense.

It's Americans who don't want to apply common sense to their thinking that validates the funding for these expensive lessons in common sense.

[Big Jim Slade]

Didn't take too long, eh? The good news is:

1. We have enough kids already. They tend to be expensive, by the way. After reading your article, I feel lucky to even remember their names. Maybe we should eat them and save some money. I don't know, I just can't decide.

2. The highest fertility rates in the United States are in American Samoa, Guam, Utah, Texas, and Mississippi. The lowest are in Maine and Vermont. Now I don't know how much travelling you've done, but your average Samoan and Mississippian are not exactly runway material. And if they were to sit on the people from Maine, there would be complaints.

3. In checking out the list of the world's smartest people (http://onemansblog.com/2007/11/08/the-massive-list-of-genius-people-with-the-highest-iq/), there seems to be a preponderance of portliness amongst the population. Bobby Fischer has really ballooned up nicely of late. Ben Franklin would likely be a Tall and Fat customer.

4. I've been assured that the world's dumbest people don't know how to eat, thus fat folks are sadly excluded from the list by default.

Who makes up this crap? I'm reminded of the "drinking water causes cancer" nonsense back in the '80's. Am I allowed to remember that? I'm so confused...

[Big Jim Slade]

My apologies. I didn't realize this was a practical joke until I re-read the article and it was sourced from UCLA. My bad.

[molly]

Wow only skinny people are intelligent......let's see fat...lazy...oh yeah...now stupid...what a great country we live in...all those fatties with advanced degrees...
who needs em..let's just burng up em skinner folks frm tha backwoods let em run owr jbs those there fat slobs hv them en stupied folks....oh yeah all LA times reporters are slim!! yuck yuck!!

[Horatio Alger]

Statistically, 40% of Americans are obese. If you feel the above story is not correct, take comfort in the fact that more than half of Americans are overweight or obese.

Do not shoot the messenger. She's just reporting the study.

[Horatio Alger]

Statistically, 40% of Americans are obese. If you feel the above story is not correct, take comfort in the fact that more than half of Americans are overweight or obese.

Do not shoot the messenger. She's just reporting the study.

[Horatio Alger]

Statistically, 40% of Americans are obese. If you feel the above story is not correct, take comfort in the fact that more than half of Americans are overweight or obese.

Do not shoot the messenger. She's just reporting the study.

[joan breibart]

This is a start. Now we have to let people know that the BMI calculation is a sure way to fatness. Dietitians calculate IDEAL weight for females as : 100 pounds at 5' ; add 5 pounds for each additional inch. For males, at 5' it is 106 pounds and 6 pounds per additional inch. Using the phony BMI measure, a 5'5" female can weigh 148 pounds. BMI measures how fat you can be without getting diabetes. So if you don't think that you need to lose when you do, you just keep on stuffing yourself with our cheap, tasteless American food.

[Em]

How about a small, painless experiment: no sodas for 30 days. Try that alone and see what happens weight-wise. I'm sure there will be a difference.

Are sodas really that essential to anyone's day?