A large Proposition: Slim down To Gain Brain Power? Weight-loss surgery can make you thinner. But can it cause you to smarter too? It is a question that scientists have wondered about, given that they know the reverse holds true. Studies have shown pai you guo that brain function declines in those who have a lot of extra pounds. Other research has revealed that in contrast to those who are lean, those people who are overweight are 26% more prone to develop some form of dementia and those who are obese are 64% more prone to meet that fate.
So a group of researchers in the University of Sao Paolo in Brazil conducted the things they believe may be the first study to track thinking processes in patients pre and post they had weight-loss surgery. Their results suggest that the brain truly does take advantage of wls, though the effects measured were modest.
The researchers recruited 17 severely obese ladies who planned to have Roux-en-Y gastric bypass, a procedure that shrinks the stomach towards the size of an egg and diverts food past a large amount from the small intestine. Both measures lessen the amount of nutrients and calories the body can absorb from food.
The average body mass index for that 17 women was 50.1. (A lady who's 5 feet tall would have a BMI of 50 if she weighed 255 pounds; a lady who's 5 feet, 6 inches tall would have the same BMI if she weighed 309 pounds, according to this table from the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute.)
Six months after their surgeries, their average BMI had dropped to 37.2 -- still high enough to become qualified as severely obese, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Before they went under the knife, the super slim pomegranate capsule ladies took an IQ test and six additional tests to assess their memory and executive function (such as the Stroop Color Test, the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test and the Rey Complex Figure Test). Additionally they gave liquid blood samples coupled with PET scans so that researchers could appraise the metabolic activity in their brains. They repeated all of the tests 6 months after surgery.
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