We are pleased to share that the Institute of Sport, Exercise and Health’s (ISEH) Dr Tom Norris has led and published new research that aimed to unpick the relationship between adiposity and cognitive function.
This was a collaborative study conducted in partnership with Dr Snehal Pinto Pereira (ISEH) and Drs Antoine Salzmann, Albert Henry and Victoria Garfield from our partner organisation University College London (UCL).
The prevalence of both obesity and cognitive impairment are high and increase with age. Against a backdrop of an ageing population, their associated health and economic burdens are likely to continue rising. Therefore, the authors wanted to understand whether higher adiposity causes poorer cognitive function or whether poor cognitive function causes higher adiposity.
They used data on almost 400,000 males and females from UK Biobank and examined links between three indicators of adiposity (body fat percentage, waist-hip ratio and body mass index) and two measures of cognitive function (visual memory and reaction time).
They observed no evidence for a causal effect of adiposity on cognitive function. However, in the other direction, there was consistent evidence showing that a poorer visual memory score resulted in lower body fat percentage , waist-hip ratio and body mass index.
Dr Tom Norris said: “People are living for longer, with greater proportions of their lives spent with higher levels of adiposity and poorer cognitive function. We have been able to address a critical research question regarding the bidirectional relationship between adiposity and cognitive function. We found that none of the adiposity indicators were related to cognitive function but in the other direction, lower visual memory was related to lower levels of both total and central adiposity.”
Read the paper in the International Journal of Epidemiology.