Middle-aged women with excess belly fat have an increased risk later in life of Alzheimer’s and other diseases that cause dementia, researchers claim.  The study suggests  women bigger around in the waist than in the hips have more than twice the risk of dementia compared to women with smaller midsections. Read the full story

Bringing Heart to Mind

Heart disease kills more women in the United States than any other disease – but are American women concerned by that?

Nope. Statistics say that only one in five women gives a hoot about heart disease, whereas a recent survey found that 61% of American women fear getting cancer more than any other health problem.

Don’t get us wrong. Cancer is terrible, but the average woman’s risk of getting terminal cancer is low compared to her likelihood of dying from a heart attack. Excess weight, which often leads to heart attacks and other cardiopulmonary disease, is the real threat to women’s health in the U.S.: eight out of ten American women between the ages of 40 to 60 exhibit excess weight or other risk factors for heart disease, and almost 70% of women ages 45 to 74 are overweight or obese.

And they know it. 97% of women recently surveyed knew that overweight and obesity are risk factors for heart disease – yet relatively few are taking action to reduce their risk by losing the excess weight.

Allergan, developers of the well-known Lap-Band adjustable gastric band, and WomenHeart, a leading nonprofit national organization dedicated to advancing women’s heart health, have decided to do something about it.

They’ve started the Heartfelt Moments Obesity Health Education Campaign, a program to educate dangerously overweight women about the risk of obesity-related heart disease and the importance of reducing this risk through safe, supervised weight loss.

The survey we mentioned at the top of the story also found that 79% of obese women would react positively if a friend or family member spoke to them about their excess weight.

Be that as it may, it’s hoped that the Heartfelt Moments campaign and similar efforts will raise awareness among women of the real health threat posed by obesity, and motivate them to take positive action to reduce their chances of suffering from obesity-triggered heart disease.

Food Cravings May Be Gender-Based

A new study from B-N-L recently found that women may be less able to suppress their hunger than men.

Researchers interviewed a group of men and women about their favorite foods, then taught the  participants a cognitive-inhibition technique designed to help them keep their minds off eating. They were then sent off to bed without supper.

After completing the overnight fast, the test subjects were hooked up to a brain scanner and served the foods they’d talked about. While all the subjects reported that the cognitive-inhibition technique had helped throttle back their hunger, the scanner revealed that the appetite-control areas of the men’s brains remained inactive even when the chow was served up – while the same areas of the women’s brains became active, driving them to eat.

Is this difference in the ability to ignore hunger the reason why the obesity rate is higher for females? Possibly. After all, say researchers, a woman’s body provides nutrition for children, not just for the woman herself. So it only makes sense that the female brain may be “hard-wired” to eat whenever food is available.

Exposure to Insecticide Linked to Female Obesity

Researchers at Michigan State University have found that prenatal exposure to DDT, an insecticide commonly used up until the 1970s, may play a role in the obesity epidemic among women.

DDT was banned in 1973 after outcries of it being a highly toxic substance with slow degradation, and its byproducts still remain toxic today in marine life and fatty fish.

Researchers studied a cohort of more than 250 mothers who live along and eat fish from Lake Michigan for their exposure to DDE – which is a breakdown of DDT.

This study analyzed DDE levels in the daughters, ages 20-50 years old, of those women, and whether exposure to the toxin was a cause of obesity.

The study revealed that those with intermediate levels of DDE, compared to the group with the lowest levels, had gained an average of 13 pounds of excess weight.  Those with the highest levels had gained more than 20 pounds. The women who had the highest levels of DDE also consumed the most fish and high fat meats.

Dr. Janet Osuch, one of the lead researchers of the study, stated that “Prenatal exposure to toxins is increasingly being looked at as a potential cause for the rise in obesity seen worldwide…What we have found for the first time is exposure to certain toxins by eating fish from polluted waters may contribute to the obesity epidemic in women.”

Because of these findings, a new line of research may be able to transform how researchers treat – and seek to prevent – obesity, and possibly help create prenatal tests to show which offspring are at higher risk of being overweight.

A lack of hormone therapy may contribute to a higher cancer risk for obese women. A seven-year-long study looked at almost a HUNDRED THOUSAND women ages 50 to 71 and found that obese women were no more likely to get ovarian cancer than their thinner sisters– IF they used hormone replacement therapy.

However, women with obesity who had NEVER used hormone replacement therapy were almost TWO TIMES more likely to develop ovarian cancer than women of normal weight.

So why do obese women who don’t take their hormones run a higher risk of ovarian cancer? It could be a concentration of surplus ESTROGEN produced by the fat cells in the body, according to Dr. Michael Leitzmann, one of the researchers of the study.  But, the jury is still out.

If you’ve been prescribed hormone therapy, it might help prevent obesity related cancers.