study links fat, dementia

Study Links Middle Age Obesity to Dementia

By EMMA ROSS, AP Medical Writer
1 hour, 31 minutes ago

LONDON - The most convincing research so far suggests that being fat in your 40s might raise your risk of developing dementia later in life.

In a study that followed more than 10,000 Californians for almost 30 years, researchers found that the fatter people were, the greater their risk for
Alzheimer's disease or other forms of dementia. The results were published online Friday by the British Medical Journal.

"This adds another major reason for concern about the obesity problem and it now unfolds yet another area where ... we have to say, 'for God's sake, we better get cracking,'" said Philip James, an obesity expert who was not connected with the research and who heads the International Obesity Task Force.

The study data showed that roughly 7 out of 100 normal-weight people developed dementia. Among overweight people, the risk was almost 8 out of 100; and for obese people, it was 9 out of 100.
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Adjusting for conditions such as diabetes, heart disease and other factors, the study found a higher risk of dementia for heavy people. Using the body-mass index, which measures height and weight to classify how fat people are, obese people were 74 percent more likely to develop mind-robbing dementia than normal weight people. Overweight people were 35 percent more likely to develop it.

The effect was more profound for women than men. Obese women were twice as likely as women of normal weight to develop Alzheimer's disease or other types of dementia, while for men the risk increased by 30 percent.
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