Kathmandu, December 24

A long-term research claimed that midlife obesity could raise the risk of dementia in women. However, researchers also came to a conclusion that calorie intake and physical inactivity are not linked to dementia.

Lead author of the study Sarah Floud, Ph.D., of the Nuffield Department of Population Health at the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom, and her colleagues examined 1,136,846 women in the U.K. The women had an average age of 56 years and were free of dementia at the start of the study, between 1996 and 2001.

The researchers gathered information about their height, weight, calorie intake, and physical activity, and clinically followed them until 2017 through the National Health Service records. These records also noted any hospital admissions for dementia.

The researchers explained in their paper that some previous studies have found an association between a low body mass index (BMI) and the likelihood of receiving a diagnosis of dementia within the next 5–10 years.

Similarly, other studies that lasted a decade or less have also linked poor diet and lack of exercise with the incidence of dementia.

However, all of the above might be the result of reverse causality, meaning that they might be consequences, rather than causes, of dementia. This situation could well be possible, explain the authors, because dementia typically affects cognition a decade before the person formally receives a diagnosis, reports Medical News Today.

However, researchers explained that during this preclinical stage, the condition could slowly but gradually affect behavior, impair mental and physical activity, reduce the intake of food and calories, and cause weight loss.

According to the researchers, some recent meta-analyses pointed out that although in the short term, a low BMI might be associated with dementia as a result of reverse causality, over a longer period, obesity is positively associated with dementia.

Hamro Doctor