Overweight and risk of dementia

The reviewed research evaluated the association of midlife overweight and dementia, Alzheimer disease and vascular dementia (Xu WL, et al. 2011).

This study was especially interesting because the study participants were 8,534 twin individuals with an average age of 74.4 years.

Height and weight of the participants were available at midlife (mean age 43.4) since the study was done in Sweden. Sweden has social medicine and keeps good records.

Overweight was recorded as a body mass index of 25-30 and obesity as a body mass index over 30.

The results documented that both overweight and obesity at midlife independently increase the risk of dementia, Alzheimer disease and vascular dementia.

The sooner you lose excess weight, if you have any, the better it is because overweight increases your risk for many other diseases as well.

The book “The Food Connection” explains what to do to get healthier without having to count calories and includes a lot of easy to make recipes.