The Crunchy Add-On Linked to Less Visceral Fat and Preserving your Brain

I don't know about you, but I don't want my brain shrinking any. Unfortunately, father time and a few other factors have different ideas. Maybe they're threatened by our intelligence. Well, regardless of the reason, a shrinking brain is often linked to reduced cognitive function like reasoning, emotional stability, and memory. So, from multiple layers, it ain't good. That said, some things can be done to prevent our brain from shrinking. I've covered some before, but there's a new

study that illuminates exactly how we can prevent brain shrinking and by extension cognitive decline. Now, the nice thing about this study is that it is actually includes several studies within it and reanalyzes the relationship between good health habits, which we'll get into specifics, your brain, and then the key antagonist, visceral fat. Now, visceral fat is a type of fat that sits in the deeper sections of your body around your organs as well. This visceral fat changes your body's physiology to be more inflammatory through the release of immune activating molecules called cytoines. And it's also affecting nearby organs that then don't work as well like your pancreas, your liver, and others certainly. So it stands to some reason that visceral fat may also affect our brain even changing our brain size called brain atrophy. In this study, researchers pulled the data collected across multiple intervention trials. Think like randomized control trials that had measured brain volume and function after a lifestyle intervention like exercise or diet. Then they looked at the relationship between the amount of visceral fat that a person had and the relationship to the size of their brain. And we can see that shown here. You can see total brain size on the vertical axis. The higher the better. You'd be like the brain in the pinky and the brain. Remember that show? And the further right, the more visceral fat is on the body. The different color dots are all the people included in the study. So no need to worry about that except to follow the line of best fit across the data. It clearly goes down. So, this is telling us that there's an association between more visceral fat and brain atrophy or more specifically a smaller brain size. Now, the mocha there isn't a fancy coffee. It's a measure of cognitive performance. And again, we see the data trend downward with more visceral fat. The takeaway here being that there is a relationship between greater visceral fat on your body and reduced brain size and reduced cognitive function. you're less brain and more pinky. The reason is possibly due to brain damage linked to visceral fat as

explained here. For example, what we see here is an interesting representation of white matter intensities related to three different factors. So, white matter int hyperintensities can be a number of things from the brain cells dying to breaks in the bloodb brain barrier to inflammation to basically anything abnormal. So the more color you see, the more of this damage is present, split by three factors. The red is a proxy for visceral fat. The yellow is for age and the purple is for blood pressure. Now, first of all, all three relate to more brain damage as identified by these hyperintensities. We're looking at multiple brains in the image because they are multiple brain slices at different depths. Second, each has some relationship with distinct brain damage, as in they don't overlap perfectly. So, they affect different regions of the brain. And third, while aging has the most widespread effect, the visceral fat proxy is related to a significant unique damage as well. To be clear, these are still associations, but they are repeated across multiple studies adjusting for a variety of likely contributing factors. The point here being that visceral fat along with blood pressure and age, though we're focused on visceral fat, is linked to more brain damage across a

variety of regions of the brain. Now, we do have some clues that visceral fat may be directly tied to causing the damage through increased inflammation, but it oddly seems to be specific by sex. In this study, researchers adjusted for a variety of inflammatory cytoines like the ones I mentioned in the lead to for greater inflammation and when controlling for those the relationship between visceral fat and cognitive decline weakened. This was especially true for women where visceral fat no longer had a relationship with cognitive decline. This tells us that if you look at visceral fat independent of age, inflammation, blood pressure, physical activity, education, and metabolic health, visceral fat no longer holds a negative relationship. Of course, this is equivalent to saying uh the robber couldn't rob anyone when you took away his weapon, broke his leg, and tied his hands behind his back. Not exactly shocking, but it does tell us that visceral fat may work primarily through inflammation. As when we adjust for all the previous factors, except these inflammatory cytoines, the relationship between visceral fat and cognitive decline reemerges. So, we're pressing on the right cause. This still doesn't prove that visceral fat is working through increased inflammation to cause cognitive decline. But considering its track record, I think that's a strong bet. Okay. Although there may be more data needed to pin visceral fat directly, what can we do about this brain shrinking and cognitive decline so intimately tied? And could a key food help fight these issues with visceral fat? We can lean on

studies like the central trial which belongs to these intervention studies included in the first study that we've been covering. And if you're interested in more on what we are about to go over, I have a deep dive or a deeper dive on the central trial as well as the relationship of blood sugar with cognitive decline and more on brain size and the relationship that it has to cognitive decline and visceral fat and more. But I won't bore the uninterested. You get all these perks. Where you might ask? Why the Physionic Insiders? Of course. My premium RA re research platform. My premium research platform that I've built. You can join using the link in the description if you're interested. This central trial tells us a lot because it's a direct randomized control trial that investigated if lifestyle interventions like diet and exercise could have meaningful impact on visceral fat. specifically two different diets, a low-fat diet or a low carb Mediterranean style diet. And clearly by either diet, there is a significant reduction in proxy markers for visceral fat as both diets led to significant effect. The low carbohydrate Mediterranean diet led to slightly better results shown by the blue lines. This was also confirmed in MRI measurements, though the MRI measurements did not indicate better visceral fat loss for the Mediterranean diet, even if other types of fat were reduced more with the Mediterranean diet. Now, both diets were calorie restricted, but one was not more than the other. Yet, while the low-fat diet limited total fat consumption to less than 30% of total calories, less than 10% from saturated fat, and focused on increasing fiber and grains, the low carb Mediterranean diet restricted obviously carbohydrates for the most part below 70 grams per day and focused on upping proteins and fats. Now the unique part about the second diet was that the participants also consumed 28 gram of walnuts. That matters because a the Mediterranean diet condition may have experienced slightly greater fat loss. Though I should mention that the actual visceral fat differences were about equivalent. And B, a while back I covered this study where participants were also placed on a Mediterranean diet, but it included walnuts. And guess what happened? They experience less brain atrophy, shrinking compared to those who consumed fewer walnuts shown here. The lower the bars go, the more brain atrophy has occurred. This is associative, but still telling and in line with the central trial that we just discussed. Does this prove that walnuts are the cause? No. It just shows us a consistent association since the differences between the diets went beyond walnut consumption. The point here being if you wanted to go by diet, these data suggest a diet like a lower carbohydrate Mediterranean diet including one serving of walnuts would be your best bet for reducing visceral fat. Taken in total, these data suggest that you'll be more brain than pinky by reducing visceral fat. Though, considering the different study designs and populations, I'd like to see even more rigorous data to confirm. Now, you know how I mentioned that walnuts tracked with better brain size? That came from a study that paired walnuts with two other foods, or more specifically, one drink and one food, and was especially potent combination of the three on visceral fat and the brain. Check it out right here. Otherwise, if you're more interested in visceral fat targeting peptides, then check this out. As always, I hope this was useful. I'll catch you in the next one. See you.