Kids who are overweight or obese often struggle with school work, and now new research provides clues on how excess weight may harm the developing brain. “The main takeaway is to raise awareness about brain health consequences of obesity besides physical health consequences, especially since obesity rates are very high and continue to rise,” said study author Simone Kaltenhauser, a post-graduate research fellow in radiology and biomedical imaging at the Yale School of Medicine in New Haven, Conn. About one in every five American kids is now obese, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. For the study, researchers looked at several types of brain scans in more than 5,100 kids aged 9 to 10 who took part in the ongoing Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) study. Of these, 21% were overweight and 17.6% were obese. What did they find? There were structural and functional brain impairments in kids who were overweight or obese when compared to kids who weren’t, and these changes could contribute to poor academic performance. Specifically, kids who were overweight or obese showed a thinning of the outermost layer of their brain (the cortex), and this has been linked with impaired executive functioning skills, such as planning and juggling multiple tasks. What’s more, the integrity of the brain’s white matter was impaired in the corpus callosum (which connects…  read on >  read on >

Persistent asthma may take a toll on the heart, not just the lungs, a new study suggests. When the respiratory condition is relentless, it appears tied to plaque in the carotid arteries, increasing the risk for heart attack and stroke, researchers say. The carotid arteries — large arteries on the sides of the neck — carry blood to the brain. In a study of more than 5,000 men and women, researchers found that people with persistent asthma had nearly double the odds of having plaque buildup in the carotid arteries, compared with those without asthma. Persistent asthma was defined as using daily controller medications to control asthma symptoms, such as wheezing or shortness of breath. The plaque may be a response to inflammation caused by asthma, the researchers noted. “Inflammation also plays a big role in cardiovascular disease,” said lead researcher Dr. Matthew Tattersall, an assistant professor in the department of medicine at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Tattersall cautioned, however, that this study cannot prove that asthma causes plaque buildup in the carotid arteries, only that the two may be connected. People with persistent asthma — but not intermittent asthma — also had higher levels of markers of inflammation, compared with those without asthma. But that might not entirely explain the increased plaque, Tattersall said. “There are other things, too, that could cause people…  read on >  read on >

If holiday demands get you frazzled, you can take heart from a new study: When it comes to stress, a little is good. “The bad outcomes of stress are pretty clear and not new,” said Assaf Oshri, lead author of the study and an associate professor in the University of Georgia College of Family and Consumer Sciences. “But there’s less information about the effects of more limited stress,” Oshri said in a university news release. “Our findings show that low to moderate levels of perceived stress were associated with elevated working memory neural activation, resulting in better mental performance.” Working memory is the short-term information you use everyday for things like remembering a phone number or recalling directions on how to get someplace. For the study, the researchers analyzed MRI scans from the Human Connectome Project, a project sponsored by the U.S. National Institutes of Health. Scans came from more than 1,000 people with diverse racial and ethnic backgrounds. Those who reported having low or moderate stress levels had increased activity in the parts of the brain that involve working memory. Meanwhile, those who reported high stress had a decline in those areas, the findings showed. The research team assessed perceived stress levels through questions like these: “In the last month, how often have you been upset because of something that happened unexpectedly?” and “In…  read on >

Are you an older man worried about your risk for colon cancer? Eating whole grains, vegetables, fruits and legumes may improve your odds of dodging the disease, new research shows. “Although previous research has suggested that plant-based diets may play a role in preventing colorectal cancer, the impact of plant foods’ nutritional quality on this association has been unclear,” said study co-author Jihye Kim, from Kyung Hee University in South Korea, “Our findings suggest that eating a healthy plant-based diet is associated with a reduced risk of colorectal cancer.” Kim noted that colon cancer is the third most common cancer worldwide and that a man has a lifetime odds for developing it of one in 23. A woman has a lifetime risk of one in 25. The new report was published online Nov. 29 in BMC Medicine. The researchers studied a population of nearly 80,000 American men, finding that those who ate the highest average daily amounts of healthy plant-based foods had a 22% lower risk of colon cancer compared to those who ate the lowest amounts of these foods. While studying more than 93,000 American women, the researchers did not find the same association. “We speculate that the antioxidants found in foods such as fruits, vegetables and whole grains could contribute to lowering colorectal cancer risk by suppressing chronic inflammation, which can lead to…  read on >  read on >