Be careful! Obesity is not only unhealthy, it also makes people “old before their time”
In order to food medicine
In 2017, Finnish Geriatric Intervention Study made more encouraging findings: the control of Cognitive Impairment and Disability (FINGER, interesting). The researchers recruited 1, 260 subjects between the ages of 60 and 77, who were assessed as being at higher risk of dementia.
Half of the participants in the study received general health advice, while the other half were assigned to a comprehensive health program that included a healthy diet, strength training, aerobic exercise and brain training. Two years later, the group that ate better, moved more and received brain training scored 25 percent higher on memory and psychological tests than the other group.
Even more astounding, their executive functioning has improved by 83 percent and their mental processing speed by 150 percent. Interestingly, these improvements were not affected by gender, education, socioeconomic status, blood pressure or cholesterol levels.
Diet is a major focus of research on the prevention of cognitive impairment and disability. At the start of the study, the team recommended that overweight subjects limit their calorie intake and lose 5 to 10 percent of their body weight. Next, the researchers told them to eat more fruits and vegetables, eat fish at least twice a week, ditch the cereal grains for whole grains, and replace cream with plant-based margarine. Participants also had to limit their daily sugar intake to less than 50 grams of sugar and avoid dairy and meat.
This “Nordic” or “Mediterranean” diet is similar to a plant-based, high-fiber diet in blue slow-living areas. The middle class can afford it, too, without having to go to a special store or spend a lot of money on trendy foods. Of course, sometimes healthy eating rules are hard to follow, which can be frustrating. Here are some good dietary basics :(1) what’s good for your heart is usually good for your brain, too; (b) Eat plenty of fruits and vegetables, eat more high-fibre foods and avoid processed foods as much as possible; (3) Eat moderately and consume more calories than you take in.
Here’s the problem: people don’t have these ideas. The Lancet Commission on Dementia predicts that if obesity rises in middle age, dementia will rise 19 percent in China and 9 percent in the United States by 2030. Very miserably.
You are your own worst enemy
Andrea, a gerontologist at the University of Melbourne in Australia. “We are a lazy species and we have to overcome laziness,” says Professor Andrea Maier of The University of London. She identified three key points on which the appearance of two fifty-year-old men could vary greatly :(1) degree of activity; (2) whether to smoke; (3) Whether the diet is balanced.
Yes, smoking is declining. While smoking is on the wane, obesity is poised to take its place. The chart below should represent my mother. She started smoking at the age of fourteen, when she was studying at a nun’s school in the United States, as a rebel. She didn’t quit until she was 70, when her mother suffered a small stroke due to a blocked artery. Giving up smoking was a horrible road trip for her, and using a nicotine patch didn’t help much. As soon as she gave up smoking, she began to eat a lot of chocolate, gained nearly 13 kilograms and lost the figure she was so proud of.
She later developed diabetes and vascular dementia. After my mother died of her last heart attack, I couldn’t help thinking that she might have been happier if I had let her keep smoking. After divorcing my father, my mother ate almost nothing but microwave food – she said she didn’t want to cook for anyone anymore. And she never exercised: a generation would hardly have thought of it.
First of all, my mother had no idea what was going on. Obesity has become the norm, and if you see other people who look like you, you won’t notice that you’re gaining weight. It’s easy to use the next person as a standard: a study of 3,000 parents found that a third had not noticed their child was obese or overweight. Some people scream that obesity is a genetic problem, but my mother’s side of the family is skinny.
A glance at a map of the prevalence of obesity suggests that it is unlikely to be genetic: it is eating away at American states, English counties and Mexican districts. It’s the genes that make it harder for some people to resist food and control their weight. But it’s the environment that really matters — namely diet and a sedentary lifestyle. One in four ADULTS in the UK and four in ten in the US are now diagnosed as obese. Britain has the highest average body mass index in Western Europe.
Obesity is the result of consuming more calories than you expend. The average American’s calorie intake went from 2,109 calories in 1970 to 2,568 calories in 2100 — the equivalent of eating an extra meatless sandwich a day. Few people exercise enough to burn off those extra calories, and many now drive.
Some experts now believe that diet is less important than having a car. In 1949, 34 percent of British people commuted mechanically by bicycle; Today it’s only 1 to 2 percent. There was a significant correlation between driving longer and gaining weight, with the difference between cause and effect being six years.
Obesity prematurely ages people
Extreme obesity can cut a person’s life expectancy by eight years, according to a Canadian study. In fact, just being overweight can greatly affect how old a person is. Another study found that obese people had much less white matter in their brains than thin people. Brains tend to shrink with age, but studies have found that the white mass of the brains of obese people is about the same as that of thin people ten years older. Whether cognitive function will be affected by this is still unknown, but it should not be a good thing.
Obesity is the leading cause of type 2 diabetes, which tends to strike older people. The number of people with type 2 diabetes in The UK has doubled in the past two decades and now accounts for almost 9 per cent of the annual NHS budget.
A third of Americans over age 65 have type 2 diabetes. This can have dire consequences: blurred vision, hard-to-heal wounds, toes or legs that may need to be amputated. With too much carbohydrate in the body, the pancreas cannot make the right amount of insulin into the blood to regulate glucose, which can lead to type 2 diabetes. The human system breaks down when it can’t handle the load.
Reaching the 60th mark as a fat man can accumulate all kinds of problems. Doctors are often reluctant to interfere too much with obesity because they feel that what they eat is “a lifestyle choice.” National Health authorities have spent decades trying to persuade people to lose weight, with little success. I deeply believe that the reason why losing weight is so difficult is because junk food is addictive — especially sugar.
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