I turn 45 this year. Being a “woman of a certain age,” there are many things that have begun to assert themselves into my life.

Stubborn Weight Gain

Aches & Pains

Mood Swings

Bifocals

Memory Loss

Perimenopause

Some of these things I have been dealing with since my thirties. Others are more recent, with a seemingly sudden onset.  Depending on which study you consult, you can link two or more of these things together.

What I read to day is disturbing.  My BMI, which has reached scary proportions in recent years, may be linked to my difficulty in concentrating.

Middle-aged women who are overweight may have yet another motivation to take off those excess pounds: The more a postmenopausal woman weighs, the worse her memory, researchers have found. What’s more, the negative impact on memory was more pronounced in “pear-shaped” women who carry excess weight around their hips, and less of a factor in “apple-shaped” women who carry it around their waists, the study authors noted.

In the new study, researchers found that for every one point increase in a woman’s body mass index (BMI), her score on a standard memory test — though still in the normal range — dropped by one point. BMI is a measurement that takes into account height and weight.

And all this time I thought I had just burned out my brain spending my younger years on multitasking! While I’m not quite in the age category of the 9,000 women in the study, I am still concerned:

“What this study is really telling us is that there’s something about obesity that puts you at risk for dementia, and it’s independent of other factors such as vascular disease,” said Dr. Gary Kennedy, director of geriatric psychiatry at Montefiore Medical Center in New York City.

To read the full article, go HERE