Metabolism Predicts Brain Health

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Daily brief research updates from the cognitive sciences

Understanding the link between dementia, brain health, and various metabolic disorders such as obesity is important and gives us important clues in guiding brain health particularly as we age.

Researchers around Amanda Lumsden of the University of South Australia have just published the results of a large-scale study and found some interesting corelations.

In this study they analysed data from 26,239 people in the UK Biobank and found that those with obesity related to liver stress, or to inflammation and kidney stress, had the most adverse brain findings. They measured associations of six diverse metabolic profiles and 39 cardiometabolic markers with MRI brain scan measures of brain volume, brain lesions, and iron accumulation, in order to identify early risk factors for dementia.

People with metabolic profiles linked to obesity were more likely to have adverse MRI profiles with:

• • lower hippocampal volume (key memory centre)
  • grey matter volumes (grey matter is related to general cognition)
  • greater burden of brain lesions
  • higher accumulation of iron

What was also surprising is the relationship to an individual’s Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR) – the BMR is how much energy your body uses when resting. This BMR is higher in those with obesity but it sems that the BMR is more influential on adverse brain markers than anything else.

So, it seems that a better measure is the BMR – this may sound surprising i.e. using more energy while resting might sound like a good fat-burning trick but it may also represent lower activity – when we ramp up activity metabolic rate increase during activity but sinks lower while resting. This may give your cells a better rest, recovery, and reset.

So, metabolism is a better predictor of brain health – and lower resting metabolism is actually related to higher general activity. Therefore, get moving to help avoid dementia and adverse brain effects!

Andy Habermacher

Andy is author of leading brains Review, Neuroleadership, and multiple other books. He has been intensively involved in writing and research into neuroleadership and is considered one of Europe’s leading experts. He is also a well-known public speaker, speaking on the brain and human behaviour.

Andy is also a masters athlete (middle distance running) and competes regularly at international competitions (and holds a few national records in his age category).

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References

Amanda L. Lumsden, Anwar Mulugeta, Ville Petteri Mäkinen, Elina Hyppönen.
Metabolic profile based subgroups can identify differences in brain volumes and brain iron deposition.
Diabetes, Obesity and Metabolism, 2022
DOI: 10.1111/dom.14853

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