Recent Study Suggests That Obesity May Directly Affect Episodic Memory of Young Adults

Obesity has been a continuous problem the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has been facing for many years. Numerous health risks can be connected to obesity such as diabetes, different types of heart disease, high blood pressure, and a lot more. Now, a new research suggests that obesity may cause cognitive impairments.

In the Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, it was revealed that the researchers at the University of Cambridge discovered that overweight young adults may be at risk of having difficulty remembering events in the past as compared to their peers who have normal body mass index (BMI), medicaldaily.com reports.

Study author Lucy Cheke, a neuroscientist from Cambridge University in the United Kingdom said that it is important to know and understand what we put inside our body.

"We know that to some extent hunger and satiety are driven by the balance of hormones in our bodies and brains, but psychological factors also play an important role - we tend to eat more when distracted by television or working, and perhaps to 'comfort eat' when we are sad, for example," she said.

According to healthnewsline.net, the research team called up 50 volunteers between the ages 18-35 with BMI ranging from 18-51. The participants then were made to take part in a memory test whose aim is to test the participants' episodic memory by looking for hidden items.

The results showed that people with higher BMI performed poorly in the task than those with normal BMI. It also showed that those with BMI higher than 25 had a hard time remembering where the items were hidden compared to those with BMI lower than 25.

"Although only a small study, its results support existing findings that excess body weight may be associated with changes to the structure and function of the brain and its ability to perform certain cognitive tasks optimally," researchers said.