Paunches and Alzheimers

One of the latest scientific findings to be publicized lately is that people (I assume mostly men) that have pot bellies in mid-life, such as their '40's, are three times as likely as others to develop Alzheimers in their later years, such as their '70's. The connection might seem strange at first, but it seems that belly fat is especially adept at producing just the right chemicals needed to construct time bombs in the brain.

Sometimes I wonder about some of these medical findings, because they exude a certain cruelty.

There's been another one in the last few days saying that people who were born prematurely have a greater chance of meeting early deaths, by a factor of two or more. What does a person who, through no fault of his own, was born prematurely do with information like this?

To be sure, it's different in the case of the Alzheimers, though not for old men who had, and might still have, considerable paunches. They, like the preemies, are in the toilet. The study, however, is not for them. It is purely for the benefit for all the generations before mine, especially the so-called baby boomers, who might still be able to lose enough abdominal fat to make a difference. Besides producing those demon chemicals, abdominal fat is also supposed to be easier to lose than other kinds. That may be, but how easy is it to lose, period? So, some people, bowing to what they see as their limitations, might still feel doomed.

Though my mind doesn't dwell on it, because I don't know what I can do about it, I sometimes wonder if Alzheimer's is one of the demons waiting for me just ahead. My whole existence has always been weighted much more toward my mental being than.toward the physical, and the thought of losing that is totally appalling.

That house of mine that you can see in the upper left corner of this weblog illustrates this. For various reasons I built it alone, except once or twice to stand a wall section up and later to install the septic tank. But the lumber, fresh from being parts of large oak trees and so with still plenty of moisture in it, was extra heavy, and I was forced to devise all kinds of ways to get around not having human helpers, and building the house was truly a triumph of mind over matter. That is one reason why I am so tightly attached to it, though I know it doesn't look like much more than an oversized shed to the uninformed eye..

I built my house mainly (it is still not quite finished) when I was in my late 40's, that dangerous age for Alzheimers, and during that effort I got entirely too much exercise to have a paunch. In fact, I was still as thin as I had always been, weighing not much more than 135, so I should have no worries now. But about 20 years ago for some reason I suddenly had a spurt of weight-gaining that ended as quickly as it had started and left me weighing about 160, at a height slightly short of six feet. So I am still sometimes seen as being on the thin side, but nowadays I do have some abdominal excess. Not much but some. I can wear size 36 pants, though 38 is more comfortable.

Anyway it is too late to worry about Alzheimers now. As I already said, I am in the boat now and have no way of getting out. I like to think that what really helps to fight against having your mental faculties go south is to keep using them as much as possible, and I do that, willy-nilly. Writing weird stuff in weblogs helps, as does hosting anxieties in every direction and constructing all sorts of impossible scenarios at the drop of a hat.