The Disease that Ups Dementia Risk

These risk factors make you more likely to lose it as you age
By: Celeste Perron February 4, 2011

Yet another reason to get fit, and get your weight under control: It will help protect your memory as you age. New research finds that older people are more likely to experience memory decline if they have metabolic syndrome, a condition which has already been linked to heart disease. Metabolic syndrome is defined as the presence of three or more of the following risk factors: large waist circumference, high blood pressure, high triglycerides, high blood sugar and low HDL ("good") cholesterol.

French researchers gave a group of 7000+ adults various memory and cognition tests, then repeated those tests after two and four years. They found that the adults who qualified as having metabolic syndrome were 20% more likely to exhibit signs of cognitive decline on the memory tests than those who didn't.

USA Today quotes the lead study author Christelle Raffaitin, of the French National Institute of Health Research in Bordeaux, France as saying, "Our results suggest that management of metabolic syndrome may help slow down age-related memory loss, or delay the onset of dementia."

Metabolic syndrome is one of those diseases that should be easy to cure, since its two main risk factors—wide waist circumference and insulin resistance—can be eliminated by eating less and exercising more. But clearly it's not as simple as that, since the American Heart Association estimates that more than 50 million Americans have metabolic syndrome right now. And if being at increased risk of heart attack, stroke, diabetes and kidney failure hasn't motivated them to change, it's unlikely the news that they're at increased risk of dementia will.