Weight Loss Helps Improves Your Memory Capacity

If you think losing that excess weight that you carry around everyday helps in looking your best, think again! There are more benefits in losing that extra pound than you think.  Not only shedding excess weight is good for overall health, a new study suggests that weight loss can also help improve memory and overall brain activity in women. Learn how to kill two birds withone stone, the more reason to lose that weight you have been delaying all this while.

Scientists from Umea University in Sweden came to a conclusion in their study. They used magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to monitor the brain activity of a group of subject ranged from 20 year olds and overweight women as they underwent a series of cognitive tests.

They found that obesity-related impairments in memory function are reversible. Their memory skills showed significant improvement after the subjects were made to lose weight after being put on a six month long diet plan.

The memory of events that happen throughout one's life also known as episodic memory was found to be impaired in obese people. A previous research has proven that this is a fact that is undeniable.

In another study done in 2010 by North western medicine in the US found that you can even equate the above in a formula. What they found was that memory loss was proportional to how much a woman weighs and this even differs depending on whether subjects are pear or apple-shaped.

The more weight she carried around her hips, or the more pear-shaped she was, the more pronounced and significant the memory loss compared to women who carry excess fat around their waists, the study found.

According to the lead author Andreas Petterson of the Swedish study, the altered and changed brain activity after significant weight loss suggests that the brain becomes more active while storing new memories and therefore needs fewer brain resources to recollect and retrieve stored information.

In the cognitive tests, the subjects have to pair faces with names presented on a screen. In the meanwhile, the researchers will examine the subjects’ brain activity using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). This is process known as "encoding".

After weight loss, brain activity increased during the memory encoding exercises in regions important for identification and the matching of faces, researchers said. Brain activity also decreased in areas responsible for impaired episodic memories, indicating more efficient retrieval.

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