Healthy weight in middle age may prevent Alzheimer's disease

July 7, 4:22 PMPhiladelphia Alzheimer’s Disease ExaminerLynda Seminara

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Maintaining a healthy weight in your 40s and 50s may be essential to preserve cognition later in life – and help stave off Alzheimer’s disease and other types of dementia.

Various studies have demonstrated that middle-aged individuals with a high body mass index (BMI) have poorer memory and thinking skills in old age, and a sharper decline in these abilities, compared with people whose BMI is normal in midlife.

A recent study supporting this correlation is the Swedish Adoption Twin Study of Aging (SATSA), a joint project between the School of Health Sciences, Jönköping, and the Karolinska Insitute. Latent growth-curve models showed that people with high midlife BMI had significantly lower cognitive ability and significantly steeper mental decline than thinner subjects. These findings were true for both men and women.
 

Sources: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/07/090706090559.htm; http://biomedgerontology.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/glp035v1