A Swedish researcher said that when obese women go on a diet, their memory improves. The science news site ScienceDaily reports.


According to the site, previous studies have already shown that obese women have lower episodic memory (the ability to remember events in life) than non-obese women. However, the study reports that weight loss can restore episodic memory.

Dr. Andreas Pettersson, a doctor at Umeå University in Sweden, asked 20 obese women to go on a six-month diet. Episodic memory tests were performed before and after weight loss.

The test remembers the faces and names of a series of people. Some time later, he looked at the person's face and asked them to answer which letter in the alphabet the person's name started with.

The test results after weight loss are said to have improved compared to before weight loss. In addition, when a brain scan test was performed during the test, it was found that the activity of the brain in the area where the person's face and name were matched was more active than before the weight loss.

Dr. Pettersson presented the findings at the annual event "ENDO 2013" by The Endocrine Society in San Francisco. It was explained as follows.

"Women's brains after weight loss are more active in storing new memory and require less brain resources to retrieve the stored memory. Our finding is obesity. It suggests that the loss of memory due to weight loss can be recovered by weight loss, which could be a new motivation for people to lose weight. "