Modern medical research has proven that long-term overeating can easily lead to decreased memory, slow thinking, and lack of concentration. Japanese experts have also found that about 30-40% of patients with senile dementia had a habit of long-term overeating or were obese during their young and middle-aged years.
People who often overeat consume far more total calories than their bodies need, leading to excess body fat and increased blood lipids. This results in atherosclerosis of the brain's arteries and also causes a significant increase in a substance called "fibroblast growth factor."
This substance promotes the proliferation of capillary endothelial cells and fat cells, accelerating the development of atherosclerosis. On one hand, due to long-term overeating, growth factors in the brain increase, leading to hardening of cerebral blood vessels. This reduces the oxygen and nutrients supplied to the brain, causing decreased memory, slow thinking, lack of concentration, premature aging of the brain, intellectual dullness, and in severe cases, stroke. On the other hand, excessive long-term intake causes the body to redirect most of its blood, including blood to the brain, to the gastrointestinal tract to meet the needs of gastrointestinal motility and digestive secretions, resulting in relatively insufficient blood supply to the brain. Moreover, if the digestive nerve center—the autonomic nervous system—remains excited for a long time, the corresponding areas of the brain will also become excited. This inevitably leads to inhibition in areas responsible for speech, thinking, memory, and imagination, causing intelligence to progressively decline.