One more reason to exercise
Scientists studying the impact of weight on the brain are finding that being overweight could have harmful effects on the brain. The good news is that exercise may counter those effects. The findings which resulted from experiments with mice, add one more reason to the already long list to get up and get moving.
It’s been known for some time that obesity can alter cognition in animals. Past experiments with lab rodents have shown that obese animals display poor memory and learning skills compared to their normal-weight peers. They don’t recognize familiar objects or recall the location of the exit in mazes that they’ve negotiated multiple times.
Part of this new study involved gathering more of the obesity-prone mice, allowing all of them to grow heavy, and then putting half of the mice on a daily 45-minute program of treadmill running, with encouragement provided by small puffs of air if they began to flag. The other mice remained sedentary.
After 12 weeks, the running mice still weighed about the same as the unexercised animals. But they had lost significant amounts of fat from around their middles, while adding lean muscle. And they did much better on cognitive tests than the sedentary mice.
Dr. Stranahan, one of the researchers working on the study, said the takeaway from the results is worth repeating. “Get out and move,” she said, “even — and especially — if you carry extra weight. Talk with your doctor about a safe and tolerable exercise program, and then try to stick with that routine so that extra pounds won’t weigh too heavily on your mind.”
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