Body shape may affect mental acuity
Big apples fare better than plump pears
By Janet Raloff
Being fat may diminish mental performance, studies find — a problem that worsens with age. But among elderly women, where fat is deposited may matter. To wit: The big apple is sharper than the obese pear.
Genetics dictates where people preferentially accumulate body fat. For most it’s around the belly. Among the obese, these apple-shaped individuals tend to run a bigger risk of developing heart disease than do pears — people who deposit most of their excess fat at the hips and thighs. For a host of reasons, physicians had expected that if body shape affected mental performance, apples would again prove the bigger losers.
In fact, the opposite appears true, Diana Kerwin of Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago and her colleagues report online July 14 in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society.
The team pored over data collected from more than 8,700 women, all 65 to 79 years old. These were a healthy subset of incoming participants to the Women’s Health Initiative study. This long-running trial at 40 medical centers across the country has been investigating the role of hormone-replacement therapy and diet on risk of heart disease, fractures and certain cancers.