Waist size can determine dementia risk

People with excess abdominal fat during midlife are also prone to dementia, apart from having a higher risk of not only prone to cardiovascular disease.

Excess fat round the bellly is considered a more dangerous risk factor for cardiovascular disease and diabetes than total body obesity. In a recent study it has been found that besides these problems, central obesity can also raise one's risk of developing dementia. Dementia is the progressive decline in cognitive function due to damage or disease in the brain beyond what might be expected from normal aging.

To evaluate the association between midlife central obesity and risk of dementia three decades later, American researchers followed nearly 6,600 adults for an average of 36 years. These participants had their sagittal abdominal diameter (the span of the waist from front to back) measured. The data was adjusted for age, sex, race, education, marital status, diabetes, hypertension, hyperlipidaemia, stroke, heart disease, and medical utilisation.

The results showed that those with the largest bellies in middle-age were nearly three times more likely to develop dementia than the trimmer people in the study group. Even among adults whose weight fell within the normal range, those with large bellies were 89 percent more likely to develop dementia. Moreover, having a large belly seemed to raise dementia risk even among men and women with weights in the normal range.

These findings suggest that abdominal obesity during midlife increases the risk of dementia, independent of other risk factors like diabetes and heart problems.