Bigger belly in 40s and 50s linked to Alzheimer's disease in the future

Belly fat in your 40s or 50s may not just be a sign of being overweight, it can also indicate risk of Alzeihmer’s disease in future. For the unversed, Alzeihmer’s disease is a progressive disease that destroys memory and other important mental functions. Alzheimer's disease is the most common cause of dementia — a gradual decline in memory, thinking, behavior and social skills, explains Mayo Clinic.

Published as a pilot study in the journal of Aging and Disease in August, Dr. Cyrus Raji, associate professor of radiology at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, and his team originally imaged the brains and bellies of 32 adults ages 40 to 60. To this, they kept adding participants.

“We’ve known for a while that as the belly size gets larger, the memory centers in the brain get smaller,” said Alzheimer’s disease researcher Dr. Richard Isaacson, a preventive neurologist at the Institute for Neurodegenerative Diseases of Florida, quoted CNN. “This study shows a brain imaging marker of neuroinflammation which I had not seen before,” said Isaacson, who was not involved in the new study. “The brain imaging links the belly fat, or visceral fat, to the brain dysfunction through an inflammatory cascade.”

Unlike subcutaneous fat that you can pinch under your skin or along your waistline, visceral fat can’t be poked, prodded or pinched. It hides deep in the belly behind the abdominal muscles, and wraps itself around vital organs. “Subcutaneous fat is typically not associated with insulin resistance,” Isaacson said. “The higher the visceral fat level, however, the more a person has insulin resistance that causes inflammation in the body and the brain.”

The study found people in their 40s and 50s with a greater amount of hidden belly fat “had a higher amount of an abnormal protein called amyloid in a part of the brain that we know is one of the earliest places where Alzheimer’s occurs,” said senior author Dr. Raji.

“We also found that the individuals with higher amounts of visceral fat tend to have more inflammation in widespread white matter tracks in the brain,” said lead author Dr. Mahsa Dolatshahi, a postdoctoral research fellow at Washington University School of Medicine. If the white matter is not functioning properly, the brain cannot adequately communicate with different parts of the brain and the body.

“There’s a sex difference, as well, where the men had a higher relationship between their belly fat and amyloid than women,” Raji said. “The reason that’s important is because men have more visceral fat than women.”

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