AMN:

Obesity is on a rampage, with the World Health Organization pegging the numbers at more than 300 million worldwide, with a billion more overweight.

With obesity comes the increased risk for cardiovascular disease, Type II diabetes, and hypertension.

Now comes more discouraging news.

In the current online edition of the journal Human Brain Mapping, Paul Thompson, senior author and a UCLA professor of neurology, and lead author Cyrus A. Raji, a medical student at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, and colleagues compared the brains of people who were obese, overweight, and of normal weight, to see if they had differences in brain structure; that is, did their brains look equally healthy.

They found that obese people had 8 percent less brain tissue than people with normal weight, while overweight people had 4 percent less tissue.

According to Thompson, who is also a member of UCLA’s Laboratory of Neuro Imaging, this is the first time anyone has established a link between being overweight and having what he describes as “severe brain degeneration.”

“That’s a big loss of tissue and it depletes your cognitive reserves, putting you at much greater risk of Alzheimer’s and other diseases that attack the brain,” said Thompson.

“But you can greatly reduce your risk for Alzheimer’s, if you can eat healthily and keep your weight under control.”

The researchers used brain images from an earlier study called the Cardiovascular Health Study Cognition Study. Scans were selected of 94 elderly people in their 70s who were healthy not cognitively impaired—five years after the scan was taken.
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TheStar:

The Health Ministry has issued its staff with a warning - shape up and lose weight.

Concerned with the rising cases of obesity, the ministry wants its staff to check their weight and has warned them against the dangers of obesity.

Minister Datuk Seri Liow Tiong Lai said he was concerned with the escalating number of obese people in the country, referring to the condition as an “entry point to all sicknesses.”

“This is serious. Obesity among ministry staff is high, more or less the same as the rakyat (where an estimated 60% of the population is obese)” he told reporters on Sunday after visiting the section of Putrajaya Hospital which was damaged in a fire on Saturday evening.

“I have given instructions for staff who have weight problem to reduce weight. They must measure their BMI (body mass index) and come up with their own plan (to reduce weight).
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Bernama:

It is estimated that one out of eight Malaysians aged 30 years and above has diabetes, which amounts to over 1.6 million adults, based on the Third National Health and Morbidity Survey 2006.

Director-General of Health Tan Sri Dr Mohd Ismail Merican said the prevalence of diabetes also showed a drastic increase of 80 per cent over a period of just 10 years, from 8.3 per cent in 1996 to 14.9 per cent in 2006 for the same age group.

Even more worrying, he said, was that one third of those who had diabetes were undiagnosed, and were not aware of their condition.

This was very dangerous because if not detected early they would face serious complications later.
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