Deborah Gustafson, senior lecturer at the Sahlgrenska Academy, said, "Anyone carrying a lot of fat around the middle is at greater risk of dying prematurely due to a heart attack or stroke. If they nevertheless manage to live beyond 70, they run a greater risk of dementia.”
The Sahlgrenska Academy is the faculty of health sciences at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden.
Tummy fat linked with dementia risk
To find out whether beer belly doubles dementia risk, researchers analyzed health and lifestyle related data of nearly 1,500 women aged 38 and 60 years, part of a Prospective Population Study in Gothenburg, during late 1960s.
According to a follow up survey 32 years later, nearly 161 women were found to have developed the cognitive disorder, with an average age of 75.
The researchers found that, regardless of weight, women who had a broader abdomen
than hips in their mid-age were two times higher risk of dementia when they got older.
Previous studies have also linked excessive tummy fat with health complications and shown that such women face an elevated risk of dying from a heart attack, stroke or Type 2 diabetes when they get older.
BMI link not considered
In the current study, researchers could not find a link between high body mass index (BMI) and dementia. They said that possibility will have to be addressed in further studies.
Gustafson said, “Other studies have shown that a high BMI is also linked to dementia, but this was not the case in our findings.
“This may be because obesity and being overweight were relatively unusual among the women who took part in the prospective population study.”
The study ‘Adiposity indicators and dementia over 32 years in Sweden’ appear in the journal Neurology.
Dementia, the cognitive disorder
Dementia is a serious cognitive disorder resulting in long-term decline in cognitive function due to damage or disease in the body. It is more common in the elderly.
Affected areas of cognition may be memory, attention, language, and problem solving, states Wikipedia. Common symptoms of dementia include forgetfulness, impaired speech and problems with recognition and orientation.
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