Losing a lot of weight will make your brain younger

(Image: Pixabay CC0) - Significant weight loss following bariatric surgery would make the brain about 5 years younger It was known that bariatric surgery led to a spectacular improvement in cardiometabolic health indicators. Now, a study just published in the journal NeuroImage shows that it also brings substantial benefits to the brain. Indeed, 2 years after bariatric surgery, the brains of patients who benefited from this procedure "rejuvenated" by more than 5 years. This is the finding of a Quebec research team led by Andréanne Michaud of the School of Nutrition and the Institute of Nutrition and Functional Foods at Laval University and the Research Centre of the Institut universitaire de cardiologie et de pneumologie de Québec. This team used three databases containing brain images to determine how well weight loss following bariatric surgery compensated for the premature aging of the brain associated with severe obesity. Using the first database containing information on 640 normal-weight people, the researchers built a model to determine what constitutes a normal change in gray matter density with age. The second database, from the Human Connectome Project, compared the brains of 46 people with severe obesity to 46 people of the same gender, age, and ethnicity, but with normal weight.