Alternative Health Blog

Many Americans have obsessed about abdominal fat for, oh, decades. But it wasn’t until this year that scientists connected extra pounds around the middle to loss of brain function. New research shows people who have large waistlines in their 40sare more likely to develop Alzheimer’s disease and other dementia conditions in their 70s.

The 2008 study from the Oakland, Calif.-based Kaiser Permanente Division of Research revealed that individuals with the biggest bellies had two times the risk of the leanest people. And belly fat was deemed a more significant risk factor than family history, even if both parents suffered from Alzheimer’s.

“If [baby boomers] are not frightened enough about heart disease, maybe they will worry about losing their mental function,” said Dr. Sam Gandy, a spokesman for the Alzheimer’s Association (not involved in the study), in a wire service story.

Well, there’s even more than heart disease and Alzheimer’s/dementia for the belly fat worry list. In one of those findings covered by media outlets but not getting large point-size headlines or much air time, a University of Southern California study presented at a medical conference in February connected excess abdominal fat among women 35 to 54 to a fast-rising rate of stroke among females in that age group. The rate has tripled in recent years, said USC neurologist Dr. Amytis Towfighi at the International Stroke Conference in New Orleans. Strokes are considered “brain attacks” of sorts.

Female waistlines, on average, are two inches bigger than a decade ago. Plus, the USC study showed the percentage of women with “abdominal obesity” rose from 47 to 59 percent. Towfighi and other researchers commenting on the study generally agree that this abdominal fat and a continuing rise in obesity are at the root cause of causing more strokes.

A couple of points that got the attention of scientists and public health officials if not the media: One is the stroke rate among middle-aged men stayed about the same during the time period of federal data examined, which was 1999 to 2004. The other fact is that stroke is generally considered to be a disease among the elderly. While that is still the case, the sudden spike in middle-age female stroke and belly fat numbers (men’s statistics stayed the same in both categories) alarms health care professionals.

There’s more. Doctors have long considered men to be more susceptible to strokes in middle age, with women have strokes at more equal rates once they are five to 10 years into menopause. It’s clearly time to rethink the probabilities—and maybe even consider that women with excess abdominal fat are even more at risk for stroke than men with expanded waistlines.