Dale Rees, BDA spokesman, said: “This large study helps to fill the arsenal for making sure we tackle obesity in the UK, by preventing and treating it.
“We need to move away from stigmatising and judging individuals for being obese and offer them the correct help, as we would for someone with cancer or heart disease.”
In the new study, published in the medical journal Neurology, researchers tracked the health of more than 6,000 British people, aged 35 and 55, over a decade.
They took tests on memory and other cognitive skills three times over that 10-year period and found that people who were both obese and had unhealthy metabolic changes such as higher blood sugar and raised cholesterol showed a much faster decline on their cognitive test scores compared to others in the study.
In their findings they stressed that they looked only at cognitive function – neurologically speaking that means any mental process like perception, memory, imagination, thinking, awareness and judgment.
Rees added: “Obesity is linked to many health problems and the longer it’s left untreated the more damage it can cause. It causes our bodies to suffer from increased stress that can cause long-term permanent damage.
“These can be from metabolic changes such as increased blood pressure and excess cholesterol or through the greater work-load on our organs such as the heart and lungs, or the repeated strain on muscles and joints.
“The problem with tackling obesity is that the causes are multi-factorial, people become obese for so many different reasons and from many diverse influences. Without addressing all of them it will be hard to fight the trend of more people suffering this illness.
“This is an interesting insight into another relationship of obesity and a chronic disease, but we don’t yet know enough about how this mechanism works and develops.
“What we do know is that people who are obese are more likely to be sedentary, eat unhealthy, and follow damaging lifestyles, these all are all also linked to the development of mental decline.”