Obesity in Middle Age Could Raise Odds for Alzheimer's Later

A study in Neurology of more than 1.1 million women in the United Kingdom found obesity in middle age raised the risk of a dementia diagnosis 15 years later by 21 percent compared with women with a healthy weight, according to U.S. News & World Report . The researchers followed about one out of every four women born in Britain between 1935 and 1950, who were dementia-free and 56 years old on average at the beginning. At that time, about 2.1 percent of obese women were diagnosed with dementia, versus 1.6 percent of normal-weight women. The researchers uncovered no significant associations between physical inactivity or inadequate low-calorie diets and dementia. Low calorie intake and inactivity were associated with higher dementia risk in the study's first decade, but this connection eventually became insignificant as time went on. "The short-term links between dementia, inactivity, and low calorie intake are likely to be the result of the earliest signs of the disease, before symptoms start to show," said the University of Oxford's Sarah Floud. Northwell Health's Gayatri Devi is confident that an obese person who loses weight in midlife improves their odds of avoiding dementia. "I think there is never not a good time to improve general physical and cardiovascular health, improve brain health, and reduce risk for Alzheimer's," she noted.