Journal of Obesity & Weight Loss Therapy
Open Access

Abstract

Overweight and obesity in the children is a global problem. Besides physical effects, obesity has harmful psychological effects on children. We conducted a cross-sectional community-based study to investigate the relationship of Body Mass Index (BMI) with cognitive functioning in preschool children. Thirteen socio-economical elements of 1151 children was measured and analyzed based on their intelligence quantities (IQ) test results. Thirteen out of 33 provinces were selected randomly and schools selected as the clusters in rural and urban areas. Descriptive statistics, t-test, ANOVA and regression were used when appropriate. Our analysis showed that IQwas associated with, Household income, Place of Residence, Previous, Delivery Type, Infant Feeding, Fatherâ��s educational level and Motherâ��s educational level (P< 0.001 for all). With using penalized linear regression for eliminating the impact of confounding factor, our study shows, living in Metropolitan (�²=2.411) and urban area (�²=2.761), level of participantsâ�� fathers education (�²=5.251) was positively and BMI (�²=-0.594) was negatively related with IQ test results. The findings of present study showed that a lower IQ score is associated with higher BMI. Although this relation appears to be largely mediated when socioeconomic, status considered.

Biography

Amir Alishahi received his MD degree from Shahid Beheshti Medical School in 2009, and received his MPH degree from the Gillings School of Global Public Health, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2014. Currently, he is a doctoral student in the department of Health Policy and Management, the Gillings School of Global Public Health.

Email: amir17@live.unc.edu