Anyone Silly Enough to Think Fat Is Good for You Needs to See This Brain Study

<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"> <figure class="article-image-container article-image-container-horizontal" itemprop="image" itemscope="" style="margin: 0px 0px 50px;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><img alt="anyone, silly, enough, to, think, fat, is, good, for, you, needs, to, see, this, brain, study, " class="photo-image-article-main enlarge-image" height="530" itemprop="contentUrl representativeOfPage" src="http://media3.mic.com/ODIyZGExYTYxMCMvS0tSWC1HRFVFaTI2eEU0SmlOTk8zbWhjb1FJPS8weDIyNTo0NDk0eDMwNjAvODQweDUzMC9zMy5hbWF6b25hd3MuY29tL3BvbGljeW1pYy1pbWFnZXMvOWQxYjc3ZDhkZGQzM2I5MmJiYzAwMjM3OTViYmUwNDQ2ZDRlMTY3Nzc1ZjI2MjNkZjhmM2UzODY1YzlhMzI4MS5qcGc=.jpg" style="border: 0px; height: auto; max-width: 100%; min-width: 350px; vertical-align: middle; width: 830px;" width="840" /></span><figcaption class="article-image-caption" style="float: left; font-style: italic; margin-top: 7px;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Anyone Silly Enough to Think Fat Is Good for You Needs to See This Brain Study</span></figcaption><figcaption class="artice-image-attribution" style="float: right; font-style: italic; margin-top: 7px;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Image Credit: <a href="http://mic.com/articles/92549/Getty" style="text-decoration: none;">Getty</a></span></figcaption></figure><div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 18px; margin-top: 18px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><strong></strong><strong>Bad news</strong>: Fat doesn't just pack the pounds on to your stomach. It also clogs your brain.</span></div> <div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 18px; margin-top: 18px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><strong></strong>The extra grease in every cheeseburger, burrito and side of fries you eat could also affect your memory and learning skills, provided you eat enough of them. Once fat collects in the body, it doesn't stay there — it migrates to the brain, affecting cognitive ability as well, new research suggests.</span></div> <div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 18px; margin-top: 18px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><img src="http://media2.policymic.com/e81f4b3aa8161a86a45f0151052c5dd5.jpg" style="border: 0px; height: auto; max-width: 100%; vertical-align: middle;" width="850" /></span></div> <div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 18px; margin-top: 18px;"> <em style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Image credit: Flickr</em></div> <div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 18px; margin-top: 18px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><strong>Here’s how scientists hit on the fat-brain link:</strong> Researchers at Georgia Regents University <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24523551" style="text-decoration: none;">found</a> that a substance produced by fat cells in obese mice glides across the blood-brain barrier and gums up specific sections of the brain, reducing the critters’ performance on memory and learning tests.</span></div> <div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 18px; margin-top: 18px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">It's important to remember that because the study was done in mice, the results can't be directly translated into human results. But most of the health research scientists have done over the past few decades has been in rodents — scientists can't subject people to tests with harmful results.</span></div> <div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 18px; margin-top: 18px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">To find out how the fat was affecting the mice brains, the researchers liposuctioned the excess flesh from the critters’ waistlines. Almost immediately, the cognitive scores of the newly-lean mice (whose blood fat content also decreased as a result of the surgery) shot up. Similarly, when they implanted fat into lean mice, their scores fell.</span></div> <div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 18px; margin-top: 18px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Researchers quickly saw an inflamed and swollen hippocampus, the part of the brain critical for memory and learning. They also noticed far lower levels of a chemical associated with healthy communication between neurons than the same organ inside lean mice.</span></div> <div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 18px; margin-top: 18px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Rodent lipo wasn’t the only way to bring back the mice’s brain power. Exercise worked just as well. In this case, the researchers found that having mice run on a treadmill for three months every day for 45 minutes had the same effect as surgery.</span></div> <div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 18px; margin-top: 18px;"> </div> <div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 18px; margin-top: 18px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">It's that easy.</span></div> <div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 18px; margin-top: 18px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Now that scientists have clarified that eating an abundance of greasy food can slow us down not only physically but mentally, it's time for the rest of the media to stop promoting excessive fat as harmless. </span></div> <div> <br /></div> </div>

Anyone Silly Enough to Think Fat Is Good for You Needs to See This Brain Study

Anyone Silly Enough to Think Fat Is Good for You Needs to See This Brain Study Image Credit:  Getty Bad news : Fat doesn't just pack t...

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