Obesity Linked to Higher Risk of Dementia, Not Poor Diet and Inactivity

So your doctor is responsible to get you 100% recovered so you can do the needed exercise to prevent obesity. Because my doctor failed at getting me sufficiently recovered to be able to bike, run, cross country ski and whitewater canoe I gained 30 pounds, it took me years to lose 20 of those pounds.  You already have a very elevated risk of dementia from your stroke, don't let your doctor drop the ball in preventing your dementia. 

Your chances of getting dementia.

1. A documented 33% dementia chance post-stroke from an Australian study?   May 2012.

2. Then this study came out and seems to have a range from 17-66%. December 2013.

3. A 20% chance in this research.   July 2013.

4. Dementia Risk Doubled in Patients Following Stroke September 2018 

5. Parkinson’s Disease May Have Link to Stroke March 2017

Obesity Linked to Higher Risk of Dementia, Not Poor Diet and Inactivity

 A large study that followed more than 1 million women for nearly 2 decades has found that obesity in midlife is linked to a greater risk of dementia later in life; however, poor diet and lack of exercise are not.

“Some previous studies have suggested poor diet or a lack of exercise may increase a person’s risk of dementia,” said Sarah Floud, PhD, University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom. “However, our study found that these factors are not linked to the long-term risk of dementia. Short-term associations between these factors and dementia risk are likely to reflect changes in behaviour, such as eating poorly and being inactive, due to early symptoms of dementia.”

The study, published in Neurology, involved 1 of every 4 women born in the United Kingdom between 1935 and 1950 -- nearly 1,137,000 women. They had an average age of 56 and did not have dementia at the start of the study. Participants were asked about their height, weight, diet, and exercise at the start of the study.

For the study, women who reported exercising less than once per week were considered inactive and a body mass index (BMI) of more than 30 was considered obese. Women were followed for an average of 18 years.

After 15 years from the start of the study, 18,695 women were diagnosed with dementia. After adjusting for age, education, smoking, and many other factors, women who were obese at the start of the study had, in the long-term, a 21% greater risk of dementia compared with women with a normal BMI.

Among obese women, 2.1% were diagnosed with dementia compared with 1.6% of women with a normal BMI.

While low calorie intake and inactivity were associated with a higher risk of dementia during the first 10 years of the study, these associations weakened substantially, and after 15 years, neither was strongly linked to dementia risk.

“Other studies have shown that people become inactive and lose weight up to a decade before they are diagnosed with dementia,” said Dr. Floud. “The short-term links between dementia, inactivity and low calorie intake are likely to be the result of the earliest signs of the disease, before symptoms start to show. On the other hand, obesity in midlife was linked with dementia 15 or more years later. Obesity is a well-established risk factor for cerebrovascular disease. Cerebrovascular disease contributes to dementia later in life.”

A limitation of the study was that it looked at women only, so the results may not be the same for men.

Reference: https://n.neurology.org/lookup/doi/10.1212/WNL.0000000000008779

SOURCE: American Academy of Neurology