Two studies done by Swedish doctors found a strong link between obesity in women and dimentia but no increased chance of death was found in men who had already suffered heart attacks due to excessive weight.

The study looked at women who had been obese all of their lives and found that they were more likely than non-obese women to lose brain tissue in the temporal lobe. There is a strong connection between tissue loss and diseases causing dimentia such as Alzheimer's.

Dr. Deborah Gustafson, a psychiatrist involved in the study said, 'The temporal lobe is important for a number of reasons, including hearing, speech, language, comprehension, naming, memory, and visual processing of, for example, faces.'

These are the areas immediately affected by Alzheimer's while other parts of the brain, such as long-term memory and memory of music, is not altered by Alzheimer's until the very late stages of the disease.

'Women who were, on average, heavier were more likely to have temporal lobe atrophy,' Dr. Dustafson added.

The study did not find a correlation between the amount of extra weight a woman had and the amount of brain tissue lost.

'Maintaining a healthy body weight over the course of one's life may decrease the odds of temporal lobe atrophy and subsequent dementia,' Gustafson said.

Meanwhile, doctors were surprised about the lack of connection between obesity and the possibility of death from cardeovascular disease among men who had already suffered heart attacks.

'That there was no added risk was surprising. Of course, these are men who had likely felt the impact of being obese in the first place,' said Howard D. Sesso, an assistant professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School.

The results of the study were released today in 'Archives of Internal Medicine.'

Sesso was not sure about the long-term implications of the study. 'It is not our desire to downplay the role of being heavy,' Sesso explained. 'We would like to replicate these findings.'