'Heavier weight tied to poorer mental function'

[oblivious]

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Overweight middle-aged adults tend to score more poorly on tests of memory, attention and learning ability than their thinner peers do, researchers reported Monday.

The findings, they say, suggest that a heavier weight in middle age may mean a higher risk of dementia later in life.

Reporting in the journal Neurology, the researchers speculate that higher rates of cardiovascular disease or diabetes might help explain the link. But it's also possible that substances produced by fat cells, such as the hormone leptin, have direct effects on the brain.
http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=healthNews&storyID=2006-10-09T220254Z_01_TON979325_RTRUKOC_0_US-WEIGHT-MENTAL.xml&WTmodLoc=HealthNewsHome_C2_healthNews-2

[Warpy]

1. Cart before horse, IMO

because obese people are much more likely to be depressed, thanks to the fact that prejudice against obese people is the last socially acceptable bigotry.

If you go around getting treated like shit because people make all sorts of baseless judgments about your value as a human being, you're going to become depressed. Depression leads to all of the above, plus a host of physical symptoms. Plus, it can kill.

[Odin2005]

2. Exactly.

[JitterbugPerfume]

3. one more kick in the ass

for overweight people <sigh>

[bemildred]

4. This is drivel.

Correlation is not causation.

[lumberjack_jeff]

6. Agreed.

The reverse set of conclusions would have been unacceptable.

[bemildred]

7. Being heavy is not good for you.

But neither is being very thin. And a happy and vigorous person who is "overweight" may well be better off than a nervous and sedentary person whose weight is "perfect". You have to consider things in all of their aspects, and this sort of statistical mental masturbation encourages people to think about their situation in a judgemental and simple-minded way. Well being lies in the direction of balance, judgement, and moderation, not in the direction of stress, fear, and low self-esteem.

Overweight people are perfectly well aware of the situation, and the last thing they need is to be treated like moral lepers too.

[depakid]

5. Makes perfect sense to me

Obesity is associated with a number of health problems- including depression, diabetes and CVD which in turn adversely affect congitive functioning.