There is no sure way to beat dementia, but research suggests that eating a healthy diet and exercising often will reduce your risk.

The charity Alzheimer’s Research Trust says eating a balanced diet with plenty of fruit and vegetables, lowering your intake of salt, reducing the amount of saturated fat in your diet and monitoring your blood pressure and cholesterol levels reduce your chances of getting dementia. These same things will also reduce your risk of becoming obese and overweight.

In May the University School of Medicine in Boston studied 700 middle-aged people and found that those with ‘beer bellies’ (abdominal fat) were at greater risk of dementia.

The Alzheimer’s Society has stated that there is evidence that “being over or under weight increases your chance of developing dementia. People with a large waist circumference are more at risk.”

All in all, experts believe being obese increases the risk of dementia by 42%, while being underweight also raises the risk, by 36%.

There are 820,000 people in the UK living with dementia. An estimated 1 in 3 over 65s will die with some form of dementia.

Achieving weight loss

Weight loss can best be achieved through diet and exercise – but some people feel like they need a helping hand, and slimming pills may be useful in this case. Medications like Xenical block some of the fat from food you eat entering your body. Speak to your doctor about losing weight. Losing weight if you are obese can improve your health in many ways.