Correlation between visceral fat/muscle mass ratio and brain shrinkage
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Researchers have found that a specific body profile—higher muscle mass combined with a lower visceral fat to muscle ratio—tracks with a younger brain age.
and an earlier article by the same group:
Conclusions: The findings suggest that, at midlife, obesity and abdominal fat are associated with reduced brain axonal density and increased inflammation, with visceral fat playing a significant role in both sexes.
Several years ago, I purchased a smart scale online at Amazon. The smart scale tracks visceral fat, muscle weight and other metrics each time I set on my bath room scale. All for a less than a $30 investment.
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Also by the same group:
Obesity is a risk factor for dementia, creating a chronic inflammatory state that results in white matter (WM) injury. Edge density imaging (EDI) is a novel technique that has demonstrated reliability in quantifying WM changes. Thirty obese and 20 non-obese cognitively normal adults underwent structural and diffusion-weighted magnetic resonance imaging. Visceral adipose tissue (VAT) and subcutaneous adipose tissue (SAT) were quantified via VOXel Analysis Suite by separating signal intensities of adipose and non-adipose tissue. Scans were processed by a pipeline (MaPPeRTrac) to generate EDI. Among obese participants, there was a negative association between the VAT/SAT ratio and EDI, which was not seen among non-obese participants. Additionally, males had decreased EDI compared to females. The results of this study suggest that obesity, through WM damage, may confer increased risk of dementia, with sex as a potential differential factor. EDI demonstrates promise in delineating the neuropathology of obesity and dementia.
