The latest research suggests that maintaining a low waist-to-hip ratio in middle age could mean a better chance of staying mentally sharp in later life.
The findings came after several decades of health data from around 1200 people.
The team of British, German, French and Dutch doctors found that a healthy diet in middle age, coupled with a low waist-to-hip ratio, a quick measure of fat distribution, may help indicate a person’s overall health to be “associated with better brain and cognitive health in the older age”.
People who carry extra weight around their middle than their hips may be at a higher risk of developing certain health conditions – including a reduction in cognitive health.
The investigators revealed the data, which included multiple brain scans, diet records and waist-hip measurements, suggesting that healthy eating and keeping that tight waist-hip ratio leads to “enhanced hippocampal functional connectivity” – the ability of the hippocampus to connect with other regions of the brain for processes underlying learning and memory – and “white matter integrity”.
In contrast, forty-somethings who were larger in the midriff area were more likely to display “poorer working memory and executive function” as they hit their seventies.
The team included researchers from the University of Oxford, the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Leipzig, University College London, the University of Montpellier, Radboud University Medical Centre in Nijmegen and Paris City University. Their research was published in the American Medical Association’s Jama Network Open journal.
They carried out the research because, although previous epidemiological studies suggested an association between “lifestyle factors” and “risk of dementia”, there had been little done to see if diet and waist-hip ratio could affect hippocampus connectivity and general cognitive health.
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