Does grey matter matter?
Reuter’s announce “Weight gain during menopause tied to brain changes” .
You’d be excused for thinking that it is the brain changes that cause weight gain rather than vice versa. But the new results from the Pittsburgh Healthy Women Study reported in Psychosomatic Medicine is merely observing that a small subset of women studied, in fact 18 overweight but otherwise healthy women, showed a decreased lower volume of gray matter over time.
The doctor heading the study said “Women may be particularly motivated to maintain a healthy weight in the postmenopausal years, should it be confirmed that weight gain causes alteration in brain function that is important to quality of life.”
Note the “should”.
There is no proof at this stage that the lower volumes of gray matter mean anything at all.
In fact in another report Charles D. Smith, M.D., a professor of neurology at the University of Kentucky in Lexington, is quoted as saying “There was no evidence presented that decreased gray matter in these healthy subjects represented atrophy, or that decreased gray matter was associated with diminished memory, judgment or daily function or with any impairment at all,”.
