Does obesity cause dementia?

In our first study, we looked at a condition called sarcopenia, so just muscle mass by itself, and we found that people who have sarcopenia had a three- to six-fold increased risk of having problems with their memory and thinking. We’ve looked at obesity and we saw a mild effect, not a very strong effect, and that was a little bit different than some studies that showed obesity was a risk factor for Alzheimer’s disease. So we think a lot of the studies that talked about obesity before were really talking about sarcopenic obesity, rather than just pure obesity because they never considered the role muscle may play.