but its relation with dementia is uncertain.
PLAYING DUCKS AND DRAKES WITH YOUR SUGAR INTAKE AND THE SUDDEN SPIKES AND FALLS of body sugar is asking for more trouble than you can imagine. Expanding waistlines and Diabetes are not the only disastrous fall outs. You may be eating up your brain power along with that sugar. Not sweet!
ALZHEIMER’S DISEASE AND MILD COGNITIVE IMPAIRMENT.
Increasingly, studies suggest that the connection between your diet and your risk of developing dementia (including Alzheimer disease) is a connection very similar to that of development of Diabetes Type 2 in a patient.
Excess sugar intake impairs both, the brain’s structure and its functions. Charité University Medical Centre in Berlin found that ‘high levels of glucose are associated with worse memory (even) in healthy adults and could potentially lead to more people suffering dementia’. It ‘directly contributed to hippocampal atrophy’ Agnes Flöel, a neurologist at Charité and coAuthor of the study warned that ‘the study did not confirm a causal relation between brain health and high blood sugar’.
Studies found that patients, whose blood sugar levels stayed towards the highest levels of the normal range, on and off , for at least four years, suffered greater risk of their hippocampus and the amygdala shrinking.
The hippocampus in the brain makes us remember facts and events and the amygdala enable our cognitive functions. This explains the symptom of loss of control over language, movement and thinking skills in the various (See box) dementia patients. Studies have further found a link between Diabetes and Dementia. Experts say that continuous hyper glycaemia damages blood vessel; which may lead to reducing the supply of oxygen and nutrients to the brain; thus causing deterioration and finally atrophy of the major centers of the brain. This could harm all or any important organ of the body hastening the body towards dysfunction and finally, death.
E165 – Diabetes, Glycemic balance and the Brain – www.diabetic.today
