Tag Archives: faith sentence

Want to Reduce Risk of Dementia? Don’t Diet!

Debbie says:

I know I’m not alone in being more frightened of old-age dementia than any other thing that could happen to me. Everyone is different about these things, but for me, my mind is me, and without it I do not want to survive.

That fear, a lifetime of body image activism, and my hatred of junk science combine to make this the best science news possible.

The analysis of nearly two million British people, in the Lancet Diabetes & Endocrinology, showed underweight people had the highest risk. …

Dementia is one of the most pressing modern health issues. The number of patients globally is expected to treble to 135 million by 2050.

At least by basic criteria, the science is impeccable. There were 1,958,000 subjects.

Compared with people of a “healthy weight,” underweight people (BMI <20 kg/m2) had a 34% higher (95% CI 29–38) risk of dementia. Furthermore, the incidence of dementia continued to fall for every increasing BMI category, with very obese people (BMI >40 kg/m2) having a 29% lower (95% CI 22–36) dementia risk than people of a “healthy weight.” These patterns persisted throughout two decades of follow-up … [quotation marks added]

In other words, it’s not just that low BMI correlates with greater dementia, but higher BMI, well into the categories that modern medicine continues to describe as “morbidly obese,” correlates with even less dementia. The difference between having an “underweight” BMI and an “obese” BMI is a 54% (!) reduced risk of dementia. That’s a gigantic number.

Of course, BMI is and always has been a bullshit benchmark. Also of course, the scientists are thrown for a loop by their own findings, because they went in assuming that fat would fry your brain, just as their counterparts continue to insist (against evidence) that fat destroys your body. They really have to grasp for their “faith sentence” here, and what they came up with is:

… the findings were not an excuse to pile on the pounds or binge on Easter eggs.

“You can’t walk away and think it’s OK to be overweight or obese. Even if there is a protective effect, you may not live long enough to get the benefits,” he added.

We know from other large-population studies and analyses that this isn’t true.

Of course,  no one is suggesting that these results suggest that low-BMI people should try to gain weight. Just to be clear, I’m not suggesting that either; people find their own weight and everything, including dementia risk, has multiple complex factors. But you do know what they would be saying if the study had gone the way they expected!

For me, I will continue to live the way I live, to follow my doctor’s advice (“Whatever you’re doing, keep doing it”), to appreciate my fat body, and I will breathe just a little easier when fear of dementia sneaks up and ambushes me.

When the Medical News Is Not about Weight

Debbie says:

Cancer risk news is everywhere (because cancer is so common, and so scary). Most early articles linking increased cancer risk to anything will turn out not to be true, or to be overstated, or hugely influenced by other factors. So, I wasn’t as interested in this article because of what it says as because of how it says it. The article, from that used-to-be-a-major-news-source magazine known as Time, is about links between cancer risk and height: “New research published in the journal Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention found a surprising correlation between height and cancer risk among postmenopausal women; the taller the woman, the greater her risk for the disease.”

It seems to be a good enough study; it’s based on the Women’s Health Initiative data, so it’s a large pool and (as far as I can tell from a superficial article) the methodology was reasonable enough. If the article was about weight (which is constantly linked to cancer), it would end with what our own Lynne Murray calls “the faith sentence,” the capper to an article that reinforces what the writer and/or the researchers believe. In the cancer/weight articles, it is usually “proper attention to diet, weight and lifestyle management would save so many lives,” or words to that effect. In weight articles, the faith sentence is a club, used to remind you that your cancer (or whatever) is your fault and you just aren’t managing yourself properly. Here’s the American Cancer Society’s version:

While we still have much to learn about the link between weight loss and cancer risk, people who are overweight or obese should be encouraged and supported if they try to lose weight. Aside from possibly reducing cancer risk, losing weight can have many other health benefits, such as lowering the risk of other chronic diseases like heart disease and diabetes. Losing even a small amount of weight has health benefits and is a good place to start.

In the Time article, we see a very different faith sentence.

[Dr. Thomas] Rohan, [chair and professor of epidemiology and population health at Albert Einstein College of Medicine] and his colleagues say the study doesn’t imply that cancer is inevitable for every tall woman. The study found an association, not a cause-and-effect relationship. And it’s unlikely that diseases as complex as cancer can be traced to just one developmental process such as growth.

In other words, ladies, your height is not your fault, so we need an ending sentence that tells you not to worry too much, and not to assume you are doomed. If the same sentence was used as the closure for an article about the risks of fat in any area of health, it would say:

[Experts] say the study doesn’t imply that [this disease] is inevitable for every fat woman. The study found an association, not a cause-and-effect relationship. And it’s unlikely that diseases as complex as [this one] can be traced to just one developmental process such as body size. While losing weight has known health benefits, it also has associated health risks, and has been regularly demonstrated not to be reliably possible, even in very carefully controlled conditions.

The great thing about this faith sentence is that it’s true.