Yet another reason to lose belly fat: Carrying it around increases your risk of dementia

( Natural News ) General obesity is an epidemic, but it is possible to have excess belly fat without being generally obese. Still, unwanted belly fat is bad news for overall health. Researchers even found that waist-to-hip ratio, and not body mass index (BMI), can increase your risk of dementia . Dementia is the loss of cognitive functioning , such as thinking, remembering, and reasoning, as well as behavioral abilities. It is severe enough to interfere with the daily life and activities of an individual. The most common form of dementia is Alzheimer’s disease, which accounts for 60 to 80 percent of dementia cases . Earlier studies have shown that overweight adults tend to have problems in memory and visuospatial tasks. However, whether this connection continues into older age is not fully understood. Therefore, a team of researchers from the Republic of Ireland and the U.K. looked at the possible connection between belly fat and cognitive abilities in adults aged 60 years and above. For this purpose, they pooled data from the Trinity Ulster Department of Agriculture aging cohort study which included 5,186 participants who were assessed using various cognitive tests. (Related: Belly Fat Linked to Dementia, Alzheimer’s Later in Life .) The research team found that the measure of belly fat in this population is associated with cognitive impairment. In particular, those with a higher waist-to-hip ratio had reduced cognitive performance. According to the report, only 16 percent of men and 26 percent of women had a BMI within the normal range, which is between 18.5 and 24.9. Higher BMI measurements did not display the same trend. Instead, higher BMIs even protected cognitive function. This may be because BMI is not always a reliable measure of body fat as it only considers weight and height, according to the […]

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