Spare Tire Bad News for Future Dementia Risk

By Anastacia Mott Austin

You can joke about your middle-aged spare tire all you want, but lately it’s become no laughing matter.

A recent study shows that having too much belly fat in one’s forties is a harbinger of future dementia.

The new study comes not long after another report declaring that today’s baby boomers face future Alzheimer’s like no other generation before them – one in eight current boomers will develop Alzheimer’s in their lifetimes.

The belly fat study was led by Rachel Whitmer and other researchers from Kaiser Permanente’s Division of Research in northern California. They examined the medical records of 6,583 people who had had their abdominal fat measured in their forties and fifties.

For people with the most visceral fat, or fat that settles inside the abdominal cavity and surrounds vital organs, the risk of developing dementia was the highest – 2.72 times that of people with the least belly fat.

The researchers were not sure why the type of inter-abdominal fat was associated with higher risk. One theory is that fat which settles inside the abdominal cavity, next to major organs, is more metabolically active than other types of fat, and can be responsible for deposits of plaque, both in the arteries and in the brain. Plaque deposits on the brain have been tied to certain types of dementia.

People with a high amount of visceral fat tend to be what scientists call "apple-shaped," storing most of their fat in the chest and belly area. Pear-shaped people store fat in the thigh and rear area.

While pear-shaped people have their own issues, such as the fact that they have a harder time losing weight overall, they do not seem to face the same risks of dementia as those apple people.

"People need to think not just about weight, but where they carry their weight," said Whitmer. "They need to know if they're apples or pears."

And most of those with round tummies could do well to eat more apples and pears. Doctors say that a healthy diet high in fruits and vegetables, as well as regular exercise, will reduce overall body fat, including the dangerous belly fat.

While diet and exercise is the most effective way to reduce fat, and therefore potentially reduce one’s risk of later dementia, those fearing Alzheimer’s disease might want to look at the year they were born as well.

Another recent study has shown that today’s baby boomers – those born between 1946 and 1964 - face a much higher risk of eventually developing Alzheimer’s disease than any previous generation.

The Alzheimer’s Association, based in Chicago, released its annual report this month, in which it was predicted that more than 7.7 million Americans will develop Alzheimer’s by the year 2030, a 48% increase over today.

"This is something everybody has to deal with to some degree,'" said Gunnar Gouras, a neurologist from Weill Cornell Medical College in New York, to reporters. "Alzheimer's is going to be a huge burden on our society. It is now, and it will be greater unless we have more effective medications."

Medical experts say that part of the reason more people will have Alzheimer’s in the future is that other diseases like cancer and heart attacks are not claiming as many victims as in the past. In short, people are living longer, and the older one is, the greater the risk of eventually developing some form of dementia.

"We've invested heavily in cancer and heart research and now we're seeing the payoff," said Stephen McConnell, a representative of the Alzheimer’s Association, to the press. "Unfortunately, we've not made the same investments in Alzheimer's research."

McConnell says that boomers are in denial, still believing that conditions of old age affect their parents, not them.

Said McConnell to reporters, "It's the baby boomers now, it's us…it's not just our parents."