Foods That Make You Smart
Here’s a very important reason to get to your healthy weight and stay there: You don’t want to lose your mind.
You can’t escape the statistics. Obesity is a global problem, affecting adults and children of both developed and developing nations. More than 65 percent of American adults are overweight and obese; more than 30 percent of kids are, too. There is no sign that as a nation we’re taking the advice of health experts to stop this madness. The government is not responding to these statistics as they would a more obvious epidemic, such as the flu or an infectious disease, but obesity in itself contributes to more than 300,000 deaths yearly.
There’s an epidemic of Type 2 diabetes, which health experts link to the increase in weight and decrease in activity. But you may not have heard the latest bad news: Being overweight doubles your risk for dementia. Dementia, most commonly Alzheimer’s disease, affects nearly 18 million globally. By 2025 this figure is expected to rise to 34 million.
Heart health linked to brain health
According to the Alzheimer’s Association, besides age, family history and genetics, strong evidence links brain health to heart health. Alzheimer’s is characterized by the buildup of plaques in the brain, and the risk of developing Alzheimer’s or vascular dementia appears to be increased by many conditions that damage the heart and blood vessels, including heart disease, diabetes, stroke and high blood pressure or cholesterol.
Research presented at the 9th International Conference on Alzheimer’s Disease and Related Disorders in July 2004 showed that mid-life obesity, hypertension and high cholesterol each double the risk for dementia and Alzheimer’s, and if you have all three, you’re six times more likely to get dementia or Alzheimer’s disease.
Experts theorize that a high insulin level, common in people with pre-diabetes, contributes to inflammation that hurts both heart and accelerates development of dementia.
Taken from http://www.ediets.com/news/article.cfm?cmi=1645337&cid=5&code=76073
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