On Fitness

Cornell University scientist Brian Wansink is the king of mindless eating. Not because he permanently has his hand in a box of Junior Mints, but because he has studied, psychoanalyzed, and otherwise tried to crack the code of why we eat so much. As I've written before, he focuses on all the cues in our environment that cause us to overeat without realizing it and gives advice on how to re-engineer our surroundings to encourage better habits.

During a conference call today sponsored by the International Food Information Council, Wansink explained why the holiday period is chock full of unhelpful eating cues. First, no matter the time of year, we are pretty useless at realizing how much the plates and other dishes from which we serve and eat influence how much we eat. Even after being warned that bigger bowls lead to overeating, we will still go ahead and pig out when we're given a big bowl. Moreover, letting our own appetites—the inner voice that says, "I'm not hungry anymore"—govern how much we eat is a losing battle. Most Americans simply don't think in those terms, he says. His research has shown that Parisians say they'll stop eating when they're no longer hungry or the food no longer tastes good; Chicagoans typically say they stop when the plate is empty, when everyone else is finished, or when the TV show is over(!). Finally, the calories in family recipes have been rising over the years, either because of more calorie-dense ingredients or because a casserole that was once intended to feed six or eight people is now consumed by a smaller family of three or four.

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Wasn't the coming generation of senior citizens supposed to be the most active of all? The baby boomers may not be power-walking happily into their later years after all, if the trend captured by a new study continues. Researchers from the David Geffen School of Medicine at the University of California–Los Angeles found that people ages 60 to 69 report more disabilities (things like being unable to walk up 10 steps without rest and having difficulty doing chores and getting dressed) than in years past. While those are not the boomers—the people studied were born before the end of World War II—the researchers pointed out that there are large and none-too-pretty implications if members of that huge demographic group end up becoming similarly burdened by disability. (Who will take care of them all?)

The study, published online in the American Journal of Public Health, wasn't designed to pinpoint the cause of the changes. It simply looked at government survey data from 1988–1994 and 1999–2004 to track changes in disabilities over time. But one possible explanation, the authors wrote, is that while obesity is a problem across the board, African-Americans and Hispanics tend to have higher rates of obesity and lower socioeconomic status, both of which are tied to disability, and a growing proportion of 60-to-69-year-olds are from those ethnic groups. But even controlling for things like weight, health, and demographics, there was still an effect that couldn't be accounted for. Complicating things further is that people over age 70 either showed no change or an improvement in disability rates.

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Alzheimer's disease is known for the knockout blow it delivers to memory and other cognitive functions. But this disease of the brain may also be linked to muscle weakness, according to a study published today in the Archives of Neurology. Among the 900 older adults in the study, those who were initially stronger had a smaller chance of getting Alzheimer's in the future. (The average follow-up time was 3.6 years.) Muscle strength was also tied to a lower risk of developing mild cognitive impairment, the precursor to Alzheimer's disease, the study found.

As tempting as it is to yell from the hilltops that hitting the gym prevents Alzheimer's, this study wasn't designed to tell if there's a causative effect, says Patricia Boyle, a neuropsychologist with the Rush Alzheimer's Disease Center in Chicago and an author of the study. It's looking like one degenerative process drives both conditions, and it shows up first as muscle weakness before manifesting itself as cognitive problems. That common danger may be damage to the mitochondria—the cells' energy factories—or central nervous system disorders like stroke, the study authors say. Or, the same accumulations of plaques and tangles in the brain that are characteristic of Alzheimer's disease may be responsible. "We know they cause cognitive problems, but there's increasing evidence that they cause motor dysfunction," says Boyle. That suggests that screening older folks for muscle strength may offer a way to identify who is most at risk of the disease, she says.

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