Obesity tends to obscure elderly women’s memory
By IANSThursday, July 15, 2010
WASHINGTON - The more an elderly woman weighs, the worse her memory becomes.
The effect is more pronounced in women who carry excess weight around their hips, known as pear shapes, than women who carry it around their waists, called apple shapes.
The reason such women experience more memory and brain function deterioration than apple-shaped women is related to the type of fat deposited around the hips versus the waist, reports the Journal of the American Geriatric Society.
“Obesity is bad, but its effects are worse depending on where the fat is located,” said Diana Kerwin, assistant professor of medicine at Feinberg School of Medicine, Northwestern University, who led the study.
The study of 8,745 normal, post-menopausal women aged 65-79 from the Women’s Health Initiative hormone trials is the first in the US to link obesity to poorer memory and brain function in women.
“The message is obesity and a higher body mass index (BMI)- height to weight ratio - are not good for your cognition and your memory,” said Kerwin, according to a Feinberg statement.
“While the women’s scores were still in the normal range, the added weight definitely had a detrimental effect.”
For every one-point increase in a woman’s BMI, her memory score dropped by one point.
