Study Says Fat People Have Lower Iqs


by Janet Martin - Date: 2007-05-30 - Word Count: 464 Share This!

Fat people are mistakenly perceived as greedy and lazy. Now a new study suggests they may be stupid as well! That may come as a big blow to millions of people around the world who are suffering from obesity. In the United States alone, over 64 million American adults are obese.

Indeed, if the results of this study are to be believed, being fat won't only make you look bad, it can even affect your IQ! That's what French scientists say after finding a link between obesity and a person's cognitive function. Results of a five-year study they conducted revealed that the fatter a person is, the higher the rate of cognitive or mental decline.

"It goes to show obesity affects every single organ in the human body," said Dr. David Haslam, clinical director of the National Obesity Forum who called the research "alarming."

More than 2,200 men and women aged 32 to 62 took part in the study that was published in the journal "Neurology." The subjects were asked to take four mental ability tests that were repeated five years later. People with a Body Mass Index (BMI, a measure of body fat) of 20 or less could recall 56 percent of words in a vocabulary test. Obese subjects with a BMI of 30 or higher, could remember only 44 percent.

"The fatter subjects also showed a higher rate of cognitive decline when they were retested five years later: their recall dropped to 37.5 percent, whereas those with a healthy weight retained their level of recall," reported Nina Goswami in telegraph.co.uk, Britain's No. 1 newspaper website.

Dr. Maxime Cournot, the head of the study, believes that fat hormones may be responsible for this. He thinks they may have a damaging effect on brain cells.

"Another explanation could be that since obesity is a widely known cardiovascular risk factor, due to the thickening and hardening of the blood vessels, that the same happens with the arteries in the brain," said Cournot, an assistant professor in clinical epidemiology at Toulouse University Hospital.

Not all people, however, subscribe to this theory. Anne Widdecombe, a former minister, believes the study is flawed and doesn't mirror reality.

"You just need to look around the world and you will see hundreds of thin nitwits and clever fat people. When I lost weight it was my waistline that improved, not my cerebellum," she said.

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Related Tags: weight loss, obesity, phenocal

Janet Martin is an avid health and fitness enthusiast and published author. Many of her insightful articles can be found at the premier online news magazine. http://www.thearticleinsiders.com.

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