Not only does obesity increase your risk of Alzheimer's disease, so can weight loss, according to a new report.
Scientists based their findings on medical data taken from the Memory and Aging Project that tracked the health of some 450 patients ranging in age from 65 to their early 80s. About 28 percent of patients (125) were eventually diagnosed with mild dementia.
Interestingly enough, older patients affected by dementia lost twice the normal average of weight in the year prior to being diagnosed. What's more, patients who were diagnosed with dementia weighed 8 pounds less on average at the start of the study than those who never succumbed to it.
These results can't doom your health, however, as long as you make common sense lifestyle choices to prevent dementia and Alzheimer's. Some safe prevantatives to do just that:
Archives of Neurology, Vol. 63, No. 9, September 2006: 1312-1317
Science Daily September 17, 2006