The more scientists look into how obesity affects the human body the more it makes sense to abide by a healthy diet. Apart from boosting the risk of heart disorder and diabetes, now scientists have found out that obesity is linked to the development of dementia and cognitive decline in adults aged 60 to 70.
Living by a healthy code isn’t exactly easy, particularly these days. Access to healthy, fresh and organic foods is much more difficult than imagined and most people’s lifestyles aren’t exactly easy to coordinate with a balanced nutrition. Stress, everyday subjection to pollution, daily bad habits such as coffee and cigarettes aren’t making our lives any easier, but yet we find very difficult to switch to low fat based foods.
Plus, as studies point out if you want to be healthy when you’re old, you’d better start taking care of your body and mind ahead of time. Risk of heart conditions and even heart failure, diabetes and all sorts of cognitive disorders can be reduced with prevention.
A study published in the journal Age and Aging showed that senior adults with a high body mass index are at risk of developing dementia and cognitive decline. Basically, as the findings show, the bigger the belly, the bigger the risk of having cognitive problems after age 60 is. In fact, the lowest cognitive function has been identified in senior adults aged 60 to 70 featuring the highest body mass indexes.
Dr. Dae Hyun Yoon, involved with the study, explains: “Aging is characterized by lean body mass loss and adipose tissue increase without weight gain, which may not be captured by BMI, and traditional adiposity measures like BMI are less useful in elderly persons”.
The study itself looked at only 250 patients, but its findings are confirmed by previous researchers showing that obesity and excess fat are key in cognitive decline. Yoon added that “a higher BMI is related to lower dementia risk in the oldest old”, but at the same time “it is possible that persons with low BMI lost their weight because of premorbid dementia”.
What studies such as the present one try to emphasize is that obesity does bring along a vulnerability in the human body that could be avoided with prevention.
