High BMI as a Causal Risk Factor for Vascular-Related Dementia

A recent JCEM paper has indicted obesity as the possible cause of yet another disease – vascular-related dementia. Targeting obesity and hypertension with medications and other weight-loss interventions could prevent developing dementia.

In a 2007 paper published in Obesity Reviews , the late Sir David Haslam wrote that the origins of obesity can be traced back 30,000 years. In the paper, “Obesity: a medical history,” Haslam explains that humans who could store energy in the most efficient way would survive inevitable fasts and famine.

“But natural selection has turned on us,” Haslam writes. “Life now favours inefficient phenotypes who fail to store energy in adipose depots, while those who lay down fat in the abdomen are condemned to premature death.

To fight obesity, we are flying in the face of evolution and instinct, consciously countermanding the urge to eat for survival, and be as inactive as possible in order to conserve energy.” Obesity has had a complicated history these past 30,000 years. In some cultures, obesity was viewed as something to attain.