Monday 28 November 2022 03:23 PM Food for thought: Obese and overweight children have less developed brains trends now
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Overweight children could struggle at school because piling on the pounds affects their brain health, a study suggests.
Researchers have discovered that a higher weight and BMI in children could influence key areas of the brain’s connectivity.
This could affect attention span and the ability to juggle multiple tasks, they warned.
The team, from the Yale School of Medicine in Connecticut, analyzed brain imaging data for 5,169 children aged between nine and 10-years-old.
They specifically looked at connectivity between the neural regions and how much white matter was present, which is important for communication between different areas of the brain.
This was then compared to the children’s BMI z-scores, a measure of weight adjusted for a child’s age and sex.
It comes after a study found eating junk food can trigger aches or make people more sensitive to pain — even if they are healthy and slim, a study suggests.
Obese and overweight children have less developed brains than their peers, study shows (file image)