Omnivore - Belly fat and dementia: You’ve got visceral fat and you’re certifiable too

It’s bad enough that fat contributes to diabetes and heart disease, besides diminishing your hotness. Now, according to researchers with Kaiser Permanente, belly fat may also be a contributing factor in the development of dementia:

In the Kaiser study, researchers looked at records from patients in their 40s and 50s who had their abdominal fat measured in the 1960s and ’70s. Of the 6,583 patients studied, 15.9 percent had been diagnosed with dementia by 2006.

Among patients with the most visceral fat in middle age, the rate of dementia was 324.3 cases per 10,000; patients with the least belly fat had a rate of dementia of 214.6 cases per 10,000.

When the data was adjusted for factors that can affect dementia — including age, education, sex, and medical conditions such as stroke or heart disease — people with the most belly fat were 2.72 times more likely to develop dementia than those with the least fat.

Even thin people could be at risk if they have a large pot belly. In the study, patients who were of average weight but in the category with the most visceral fat were 89 percent more likely to develop dementia than people of average weight with little or no belly fat.

Get the whole, depressing story here.

(Image of viscerally fat, demented person from Valid Insanity.)