As obesity continues to rise around the world, recent research revealed an unsettling link between excess weight and mental wellbeing, reporting that being overweight does not just cause anxiety but also harms brain function.
The research, done on mice, suggested that there might be a connection between cognitive problems and obesity through the gut-brain axis—a sophisticated web of communication between the digestive system and the brain.
Scientists discovered that a fatty diet caused obesity in mice, and this was linked to anxiety-like behaviors, scrambled brain communication, and shifts in gut microbiota—factors thought to cause mental decline.
"Our results indicate that obesity can contribute to anxiety-like behavior, perhaps because brain function and the health of the gut change," said Desiree Wanders, Associate Professor and Chair of Nutrition at Georgia State University in the US.
Whereas obesity is known to risk chronic diseases like heart disease and type 2 diabetes, in this research its lesser-appreciated impact on brain health was examined using a mouse model that approximates several human obesity characteristics.
The study consisted of two cohorts of six-week-old mice that were fed a low-fat diet and a high-fat diet, respectively, for 21 weeks. As predicted, mice on the high-fat diet significantly gained more weight and contained more body fat compared to their low-fat counterparts.
Behavioural tests revealed that the obese mice had higher tendencies towards anxiety-like responses, including freezing—a rodent defence response when faced with an apparent threat—than the lean mice.
These results highlight the wider health consequences of obesity and identify the need to have a balanced diet for not just physical health but also mental and cognitive well-being.
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