Slashdot Mirror
Study Ties High Blood Sugar To Dementia
A study published last week in the New England Journal suggests that blood sugar levels may be a more important indicator than previously realized for non-diabetics: high blood sugar levels were linked by the study's authors with increased risk of dementia (summary free; full article paywalled). The study followed more than 2,000 elderly participants, and found a positive correlation between blood glucose levels and development of dementia, both for patients with and without diabetes.
More ammo in the Bloomberg ammo depot to outlaw enormous sugary drinks and help lower the nation's health care costs by cutting down on seriously obese people. Seriously, nobody needs to drink a quart of highly sweetened liquid (unless you're a 50 pound hummingbird).
Okay, so perhaps it is over-simplifying the over-all issue and doesn't recognize the increased understanding of what affects what in what ways. It's important, so I'm not going to discount that value.
But the short of it is always this:
1. The body is a chemical machine. It needs good balance. When people screw with it too much beyond its tollerance, it's bad. We know this already. We hear "balanced diet" all the time. Trouble is, "balanced diets" are mostly a lie and because of human diversity, what is balanced for one person isn't balanced for another.
2. People are constantly trying to cut the head off of the body when it comes to illness. If it's "mental illness" they want to blame something mental. If it's something else, they want to blame the body in some way. It's as if this "blood brain barrier" is a thing that people believe contains the soul and spirit of a person. "Magic" right?
It's just not like that. We're all machines through and through. We know chemicals can affect our mood, our judgement, our response time, out ability to think clearly and some would say even enhance our thinking on some ways (I disagree, but okay...) We know we can affect our minds with chemicals and yet we STILL want to believe the mind is separate from the body.
Everyone needs to stop thinking this. Everyone. Laymen, Medical professionals, Police, Justice, Welfare services, Employers and more. Just Everyone.
I see this as completely obvious. Other people still cling to their ideas which are simply and demonstrably wrong.
Quinoa
Millet
Brown rice
Wild rice
Lots of low glycemic grains out there
Except by the FDA and nutritionists. Their advice is still low fat, lots of grains.
That is because the FDA food pyramid is based on the old USDA food pyramid which has since been found out that it's main purpose was to get people to consume specific agricultural products, not for their health benefit but to bolster a sagging farm economy. Even the new FDA myplate program is not about what is the best nutrion, but is designed to combat obesity. The two are not necessarily the same.
If you want medically based nutrion information, then you should use medical sources. Mayo Clinic, Hopkins, Cleveland Clinic, Harvard Medical and others all have nutrion recommendations, some even with pyramids, that are vastly lower in grains and carbohydrates than what the government food pyramids show. They might not be as extreme as Atkins or the Paleo diets, but they are definitely lower carb than most Americans would be used to (lower red meat, too).
So, if your nutrionist is still pushing out of date nutrion falsehoods, maybe it's time to find a different nutrionist or at least ask the question why their recommendations seem to differ from what the medical community recommends?