Overweight less likely to suffer from dementia?

MichaelB

MichaelB

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Here's a surprising news item from BBC Being overweight 'reduces dementia risk' - BBC News
The team at Oxon Epidemiology and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine analysed medical records from 1,958,191 people aged 55, on average, for up to two decades.

Their most conservative analysis showed underweight people had a 39% greater risk of dementia compared with being a healthy weight.But those who were overweight had an 18% reduction in dementia - and the figure was 24% for the obese.
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But........without wanting to sound "smart" I wonder if it's because thinner people live longer? My Doc told me to lose weight when I became a pre-diabetic and I have .....some but I'm still a little overweight but not as much. Everything we do is a trade off I guess.
 
jerome len said:
Everything we do is a trade off I guess.
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OTOH, the "Life Extension" people claim that you should practically starve yourself if you want to reach age 100. (I'm not sure if I want to, though!)

I'm back to the same weight I was when getting out of HS after losing about 15 lbs. a few years ago and I'm VERY happy. Being overweight just carries too many other risks.
 
Seems to fall victim to the standard press technique of "implication of causation through correlation".
 
Really interesting article, Michael. At the least the results could lead researchers a new direction to look for reasons (vitamin deficiencies, for example, are mentioned in the article).
 
On the other hand, this caveat is particularly telling:

But Dr Qizilbash said the findings were not an excuse to pile on the pounds or binge on Easter eggs.

"You can't walk away and think it's OK to be overweight or obese. Even if there is a protective effect, you may not live long enough to get the benefits," he added.​
 
plsprius said:
On the other hand, this caveat is particularly telling:

But Dr Qizilbash said the findings were not an excuse to pile on the pounds or binge on Easter eggs.

"You can't walk away and think it's OK to be overweight or obese. Even if there is a protective effect, you may not live long enough to get the benefits," he added.​
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Kill joy. Party pooper. Can't us fat people have just one little piece of good news?
 
jerome len said:
But........without wanting to sound "smart" I wonder if it's because thinner people live longer?
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That was my first reaction even before reading the responses. I wonder what the dementia score is for smokers?
 
The problems with studies that talk about risks related to people being underweight or normal weight v. overweight is that sometimes you need to look at why someone is lower weight. For example, smokers tend to weigh less or people who have some serious illnesses.

It also looks from the summary that they adjusted for some confounders but it doesn't indicate which ones. So - interesting study, but I think not very explanatory at this point. That is, it does not say that being overweight causes the lower dementia risk.

Also, jerome len, they seem to say they adjusted for the mortality issue but the summary doesn't give any details of that.
 
Meanwhile, I have been diagnosed with osteopenia. Since I'm addicted to weight-bearing exercise, eat calcium foods all day long, walks in the sun, and take Vitamin D, it has been blamed on my being Caucasian...and thin. Actually I am at BMI 20.8, which is far from underweight.

So, ya can't win. Age will get you no matter what.

Amethyst
 
I have a 20.6 BMI. I think i'll have a couple cheeseburgers for lunch and a pizza for dinner.:)
 
It's an interesting correlation. I wonder if the actual cause will turn out to be dietary, such as relative intake of certain fats or vitamins, or some difference in physiology.

It's one more clue.
 
Oh great, now I can stop worrying and enjoy the sweets more instead of feeling guilty when I have it.:mad:
 
someguy said:
Seems to fall victim to the standard press technique of "implication of causation through correlation".
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Thank you. I could never get back the couple minutes of my life I didn't waste by not reading this.
 
Another interesting consideration: the medical records of almost 2 million British people were studied from age 55, beginning 20 years ago. So the oldest are 75, who would have been born in 1945, near the end of WW2. Wonder if there were factors affecting those children's development (nutrition, air pollution, etc.) to study in relation to late onset Alzheimers.
 
The study referenced in the BBC article can be found here http://www.thelancet.com/journals/landia/article/PIIS2213-8587(15)00033-9/abstract and, as Feever pointed out, it was derived from an important study that looks at more than 1M people over many decades (Clinical Practice Research Datalink, here). The author's interpretation of the data
Being underweight in middle age and old age carries an increased risk of dementia over two decades. Our results contradict the hypothesis that obesity in middle age could increase the risk of dementia in old age. The reasons for and public health consequences of these findings need further investigation.
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They are not saying overweight is better, but they are saying underweight beginning in middle age may be worse. There are other risks to being underweight in old age we already know, such as malnourishment and accidents resulting from frailty.
 
aaronc879 said:
I have a 20.6 BMI. I think i'll have a couple cheeseburgers for lunch and a pizza for dinner.:)
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My BMI isn't much higher than that, so I'll see your burgers and pizza, and raise a family-size bag of potato chips.:)
 
Walt34 said:
My BMI isn't much higher than that, so I'll see your burgers and pizza, and raise a family-size bag of potato chips.:)
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The family-sized bag of potato chips goes without saying. You have to have something for a late evening snack, right?
 
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