How Lower Belly Fat Shrinks Your Brain & Impairs Cognition:

 

Losing lower belly fat offers many benefits for your physical health, such as improved appearance and decreased risk of severe conditions like heart disease, stroke, metabolic disorder, diabetes, and cancer.

But did you know that having more abdominal fat can lead to reduced brain size and, as a result, diminished cognitive function?

A 2018 study of nearly 4,000 people revealed that a higher waist-to-hip ratio (a measure of lower abdominal fat) was linked with poorer performance on tasks requiring mental effort and focus and poorer memory. 

Researchers found that those with higher waist-to-hip ratios had significantly lower levels of executive function and episodic memory. These cognitive deficits were found even when accounting for other factors such as age, health conditions, lifestyle habits, personality traits, and how overweight the study thought they were.

And it's not the being over weight itself that's the problem (i.e. body mass index) it's having high levels of lower belly fat that appears to be the real problem. 

Executive function is the term psychologists use to describe skills like problem-solving, planning, and multitasking. It's also critical for normal social functioning and emotional self-regulation. It helps you stay calm and problem-solve in high-stress situations.

Episodic memory is a measure of how well you remember details from past experiences and events in your life. Episodic memory is critical to peak academic and work performance. It's all about being able to remember things like calendar dates and work or task-related details.

So how does lower belly fat cause brain shrinkage and cognitive impairment?

Well, a massive 2020 study of over 15,000  UK participants also found that higher levels of abdominal fat were linked to decreased cognitive function, likely due to smaller brain size - literally through the loss of brain matter.

Abdominal fat has been linked with elevated levels of C-reactive protein and various health problems such as inflammation, high blood pressure, diabetes, and dyslipidemia. These conditions can then lead to cerebrovascular disease.

This cerebrovascular disease leads to decreases in cortical thickness and volume and increases in "white matter dysconnectivity." The decreased brain matter and brain matter connectivity, in turn, led to worse performance on tests like visuospatial memory, fluid intelligence, and working memory. 

These studies also provide some eye-opening insights into the well-established link between chronic obesity and the development of cognitive impairment and dementia - and most importantly how to prevent them! 

Key examples ranging from doing simple 15 minute resistance-training workouts that you can do just about anywhere with highly affordable, and highly portable resistance bands to eating 1 -2 cups of wild blueberries per day, to taking short 100 seconds walks or even short housework breaks through out the day! 

Hope that helps! - Click Here for Online Coaching 

Your Coach David is a former Cognitive Behavioral Psychotherapist and Clinical Behavior Consultant turned Certified Stress Management & Sleep Science Coach. He's also an International Sports Science Association (ISSA) Certified Personal Fitness Trainer and Nutritionist.