Drink soda, gain 10 pounds of fat a year!

If you can’t win hearts and minds, appeal to their stomachs. That's seems to be the philosophy of the New York City health department, which recently released nauseating videos of a man attempting to drink what looks like a gloopy, gelatinous cup of fat.



Viewers seem to have gotten the hint -- but they're spitting it right back out. New Yorkers had had it up to here. They’d been putting up with subway ads sending the same message, as well as a failed proposal for a soda tax this year. "I want this on my Ipod," one commenter at New York Magazine said of the video.

Then again, said commenter Alexandre Laudet over at the Huffington Post, "We are so bombarded with info we almost need to be shocked into listening at times so if it works, why not?"

The American Beverage Assn. called the ads "sensationalized." That may be so -- and it may have inspired the contrarian consumer to crack open another can of soda -- but I'll bet you a mineral water that anyone who's seen the ad will think twice before taking that first sip.

-- Amina Khan

Internet use may help you search and find...a healthier mind

Here's an inducement for Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and fellow seniors who've stayed off the information superhighway: if you take the on-ramp now, you'll get extra benefits in the form of improved cognitive dexterity and better short-term memory. So says a study presented today at the Society for Neuroscience's annual meeting in Chicago.

 A team of UCLA researchers scanned the brains of 24 older adults--half of them Internet savvy, the others not--as subjects performed a task that simulated an Internet search. After providing online training for those with little Internet familiarity, the researchers instructed subjects to spend at least seven hours over the next two weeks conducting practice Internet searches, exploring websites and reading information on a range of questions. When they returned, the subjects' brains were again scanned by functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging machines, which detect blood flow throughout the brain's many regions, as the subjects conducted another round of simulated searches.

Researchers found that for the Internet-"naive" subjects, two weeks of cruising the information super highway had revved up brain function markedly. Before they had been trained to conduct Internet searches, the newbies--who had an average age of 66.8 years--had used many of the regions of brain associated with judgment, visual and spatial perception, and higher-order reasoning to perform their faux-search task. But a scan of their brains found that after two weeks of honing their search-skills, the newbies used those brain regions as well as several others when performing the faux-search task.

And not just any regions: Their brains showed activation in portions of the superior and medial frontal gyrus and the inferior frontal gyrus. Those are regions of the brain key to decision-making, working memory and interference resolution--the skill of fending off distracting intrusions and allowing necessary ones while "bookmarking" one's place in a task to return.

After the training, the brain function of the Internet-naive adults during the task looked pretty much like that of the Internet-savvy older adult subjects, whose ages averaged 62.4 years. But the Internet-savvy adults actually seemed to be dogging it on the second try, using less brainpower  than they had the first time to perform the faux-search task. That's probably because they had recognized the task the second time around, and found it easier to do, researchers said.

UCLA neuroscientist Gary Small, author of the book iBrain and one of the study's authors, said the study makes clear that for older adults looking to sharpen their memories and boost their cognitive fitness, the answer is at their fingertips. Small, who researches memory function and conducts seminars to improve it, has argued that society's growing reliance on technology is likely helping to "rewire" our brains in ways that are not fully understood. While he says heavy reliance on technological conveniences can be a significant cause of inattention, mastering new information technologies can be a powerful means of brain-building.

-- Melissa Healy 

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