Body Shape May Affect Mental Acuity
Big apples fare better than plump pears
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. Among apples, the fatter they were, the higher their mental-acuity score... |
No comments:
Post a Comment