Montelores
Buckeye
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A very interesting (and I hope helpful) set of connections between sugar, carbohydrates, blood sugar, insulin, diabetes, and cognitive decline.
Please do read the entire brief article - the excerpts here are only intended to grab your interest.
Monty
The Startling Link Between Sugar and Alzheimer's
A high-carb diet, and the attendant high blood sugar, are associated with cognitive decline.
OLGA KHAZAN JAN 26, 2018
The Atlantic
In recent years, Alzheimer's disease has occasionally been referred to as "type 3" diabetes, though that moniker doesn't make much sense. After all, though they share a problem with insulin, type 1 diabetes is an autoimmune disease, and type 2 diabetes is a chronic disease caused by diet. Instead of another type of diabetes, it's increasingly looking like Alzheimer's is another potential side effect of a sugary, Western-style diet.
In some cases, the path from sugar to Alzheimer's leads through type 2 diabetes, but as a new study and others show, that's not always the case.
A longitudinal study, published Thursday in the journal Diabetologia, followed 5,189 people over 10 years and found that people with high blood sugar had a faster rate of cognitive decline than those with normal blood sugar—whether or not their blood-sugar level technically made them diabetic. In other words, the higher the blood sugar, the faster the cognitive decline...
In a 2012 study, [Professor Rosebud] Roberts broke nearly 1,000 people down into four groups based on how much of their diet came from carbohydrates. The group that ate the most carbs had an 80 percent higher chance of developing mild cognitive impairment—a pit stop on the way to dementia—than those who ate the smallest amount of carbs. People with mild cognitive impairment, or MCI, can dress and feed themselves, but they have trouble with more complex tasks. Intervening in MCI can help prevent dementia...
"Just because you don't have type 2 diabetes doesn't mean you can eat whatever carbs you want," she said. "Especially if you're not active." What we eat, she added, is "a big factor in maintaining control of our destiny." Roberts said this new study by Xie is interesting because it also shows an association between prediabetes and cognitive decline.
That's an important point that often gets forgotten in discussions of Alzheimer's. It's such a horrible disease that it can be tempting to dismiss it as inevitable. And, of course, there are genetic and other, non-nutritional factors that contribute to its progression. But, as these and other researchers point out, decisions we make about food are one risk factor we can control. And it's starting to look like decisions we make while we're still relatively young can affect our future cognitive health.
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2018/01/the-startling-link-between-sugar-and-alzheimers/551528/
Please do read the entire brief article - the excerpts here are only intended to grab your interest.
Monty
The Startling Link Between Sugar and Alzheimer's
A high-carb diet, and the attendant high blood sugar, are associated with cognitive decline.
OLGA KHAZAN JAN 26, 2018
The Atlantic
In recent years, Alzheimer's disease has occasionally been referred to as "type 3" diabetes, though that moniker doesn't make much sense. After all, though they share a problem with insulin, type 1 diabetes is an autoimmune disease, and type 2 diabetes is a chronic disease caused by diet. Instead of another type of diabetes, it's increasingly looking like Alzheimer's is another potential side effect of a sugary, Western-style diet.
In some cases, the path from sugar to Alzheimer's leads through type 2 diabetes, but as a new study and others show, that's not always the case.
A longitudinal study, published Thursday in the journal Diabetologia, followed 5,189 people over 10 years and found that people with high blood sugar had a faster rate of cognitive decline than those with normal blood sugar—whether or not their blood-sugar level technically made them diabetic. In other words, the higher the blood sugar, the faster the cognitive decline...
In a 2012 study, [Professor Rosebud] Roberts broke nearly 1,000 people down into four groups based on how much of their diet came from carbohydrates. The group that ate the most carbs had an 80 percent higher chance of developing mild cognitive impairment—a pit stop on the way to dementia—than those who ate the smallest amount of carbs. People with mild cognitive impairment, or MCI, can dress and feed themselves, but they have trouble with more complex tasks. Intervening in MCI can help prevent dementia...
"Just because you don't have type 2 diabetes doesn't mean you can eat whatever carbs you want," she said. "Especially if you're not active." What we eat, she added, is "a big factor in maintaining control of our destiny." Roberts said this new study by Xie is interesting because it also shows an association between prediabetes and cognitive decline.
That's an important point that often gets forgotten in discussions of Alzheimer's. It's such a horrible disease that it can be tempting to dismiss it as inevitable. And, of course, there are genetic and other, non-nutritional factors that contribute to its progression. But, as these and other researchers point out, decisions we make about food are one risk factor we can control. And it's starting to look like decisions we make while we're still relatively young can affect our future cognitive health.
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2018/01/the-startling-link-between-sugar-and-alzheimers/551528/
