" Because your muscles regulate insulin levels to reduce your chances of developing diabetes, a risk factor for Alzheimer’s, and release chemicals that help the brain grow, the loss of muscle mass could lead to cognitive decline Being ‘skinny fat’ causes people to experience a decline in their executive functions, including attention, problem solving and decision making skills. Muscle does a lot of important things. It helps us be physically fit and active. The muscle also releases chemicals that may help support the growth and health of other organs, like the brain. These are called trophic or growth factors and a normal function of muscle is to release these factors. The brain releases growth factors that then support muscle, so it’s a bidirectional relationship. We think as you lose muscle, you also lose the production of these growth factors and that may have consequences on brain function. When you combine that with fat, the adipose tissue—we think of adipose tissue as just fat, but as a metabolically active organ, it releases inflammatory markers—the fat releases compounds that are inflammatory and the muscle releases compounds that support growth. If you have more inflammatory markers and less growth factors, this may have really bad consequences on your overall brain health. We think that that’s the key that puts people at a great risk for developing diseases like Alzheimer’s. "