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).
No way Jose! Stoopid believe print.
Sugar gets more evil every day. I've heard that sugar causes or is linked to:
And, I've heard that sugar is acidic, but how and what that means other than that it's somehow bad I don't know. Acidic foods cause faster aging, maybe? Wish I'd known about the link to acne back in high school.
Intellectual Property is a monopolistic, selfish, and defective concept. It is "tyranny over the mind of man"
http://science.slashdot.org/story/07/10/02/0350258/alzheimers-could-be-a-third-form-of-diabetes
Vascular dementia is caused by the breakdown and rupture of small blood vessels in the brain.
High levels of serum glucose lead to high levels of damage in small blood vessels and the desctuction of 'Highly Vascularized Tissue'.
Chronic kidney disease is a typical outcome of high serum glucose.
Seems like there's a pattern here.
This is particularly interesting because alzheimer's is now thought, by many researchers, to be a form of "brain diabetes."
There are clinical data which demonstrate that alzheimer's can be reversed to some extent with medium chain triglycerides, which are absorbed by cells directly and provide energy which isn't dependent on glucose uptake.
See: http://www.doctoroz.com/videos/alzheimers-diabetes-brain and http://w.numedica.net/literature/Reger%202004.pdf for more info.
if they did a scientific study of banning "large sugar drinks" and noticed that somehow the cost and expense to society and freedom of having taxpayer funded policing of drink sizes somehow was worth it, then maybe i would agree. but thats not what they studied.
they studied the effect of blood glucose on dementia.
sugar might be a poison, but so are a lot of other things. regulating it might be fine, but stupid regulations like "drink size" are not necessarily going to accomplish anything other than wasting taxpayers money. a much more effective regulation would be requiring a warning label on all products containing refined sugar, so then everything from crackers to soup to spaghetti sauce would have it listed on the label.
Dam looks like im screwed ....anon because i forgot my logon :(
I was experiencing type II diabetic symptoms with increasing frequency. It was messing up my life.
Solution?
Low carb diet. Meats and saturated fats. I cut out breads entirely. If you keep your sugar intakes to about 70 grams per day or less, you're doing well. This meant cutting out most fruit. Even a potato converts into a lot of sugar.
After a few weeks, all symptoms went away and I feel great today. Been at it for a couple of years now. I used to get super cold fingers in the cold seasons, and I had to cuddle around heaters to stay warm. Not anymore. Also my by body fat has balanced out nicely. I look better than I have in years.
Turns out, cholesterol and saturated fats are GOOD for you. We've been lied to, yet again, in this particular case, by agribusiness and big pharma.
Read, "Life Without Bread" for the basics. It could save your life and reverse your mom's condition. $10 for a book or years of misery? Not a hard choice.
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.
I wonder how many of the 'stress'-related and weird 'genetic' illnesses just come down to decades of bad diet? I suspect that diet is more important than stress or physical exercise.
I was an undiagnosed Type 2 for a very long time, and since diagnoses it's become clear to me that brain function and mood are very closely tied to my blood sugar levels.
Undiagnosed I would experience bouts of temper or melancholy that came from nowhere in particular, and these have been mostly eliminated since I started to medicate.
When sugars a low it's very hard to think at all, you can't concentrate, and it's hard to coordinate movement. Those that think lows can be cured by simply eating chocolate haven't drunk 10 pints of beer and then tried to find a source of sugar in a three bedroom house!
When sugars are high you can be hyper for a time, before you begin to lose control of your body temperature and the slightest thing can send you into a rage.
Uncontrollable rage is very common indeed in teenage diabetics.
Oprah Winfrey's overwhelming sense of entitlement?
Berries have a little bit of sucrose. But I've not seen any real evidence that they are good for you.
Nutritionists like them because they can't fault them. They don't have many calories, they have 'antioxidants' and they don't have much fructose.
But nutritionists aren't the ones who paid attention in science class. There is no evidence that antioxidants do anything to help you. There is strong evidence that the opposite is true. That didn't get a mention in the press until Watson (of DNA fame) said it, but it was already common currency amongst the scientists.
http://io9.com/5975002/james-watson-says-antioxidants-may-actually-be-causing-cancer
The antioxidants in plants are there to help the plant protect itself against the poisons it evolved to stop you eating it. Humans and other animals have adpated in kind and can tolerate them to some extent.
We don't know berries are good for you. We have reason to believe they are bad for you, but they're small so you don't get a lot.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
>Berries have a little bit of sucrose.
Argh. I meant fuctose.
There's no significant sucrose in berries.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
Quinoa
Millet
Brown rice
Wild rice
Lots of low glycemic grains out there
Probably an Atkins like diet. About 15 years ago, I did it when people thought it was a fad and got fantastic results. Back then, everyone including my nutrition-major friends dismissed it as a kookie conspiracy theory (the processed sugars, corn syrup, etc.). Now, it's widely accepted.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
Except by the FDA and nutritionists. Their advice is still low fat, lots of grains.
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?
>Berries have a little bit of sucrose.
Argh. I meant fuctose.
There's no significant sucrose in berries.
Unless they are chocolate covered or powdered.
I was experiencing type II diabetic symptoms with increasing frequency. It was messing up my life.
Solution?
Low carb diet. Meats and saturated fats. I cut out breads entirely. If you keep your sugar intakes to about 70 grams per day or less, you're doing well. This meant cutting out most fruit. Even a potato converts into a lot of sugar.
The amount of dietary glucose T2 diabetics are able to handle varies greatly. For some 70g/day would be far too much. The only sure method is that of "eat to your meter".
Turns out, cholesterol and saturated fats are GOOD for you. We've been lied to, yet again, in this particular case, by agribusiness and big pharma.
Where things get really interesting is that hypocholesterolemia cause similar symptoms to diabetes. Most notably neuopathy.
Read, "Life Without Bread" for the basics. It could save your life and reverse your mom's condition. $10 for a book or years of misery? Not a hard choice.
If someone is taking insulin they need to both adjust their dosage and monitor their blood sugar levels when changing their diet in such a way. Probably even more so if they are T2 since a change of diet could affect insulin resistance making "carb counting" ineffective at working out the correct dosage. After a few weeks, all symptoms went away and I feel great today. Been at it for a couple of years now. I used to get super cold fingers in the cold seasons, and I had to cuddle around heaters to stay warm. Not anymore. Also my by body fat has balanced out nicely. I look better than I have in years.
I've at least glanced at a lot of Web articles about most/least healthy foods. Pretty much every food has been attacked by one nutritionist or another, but one group that seems to be universally approved are berries. We're all supposed to eat our berries. Well, guess what. Berries have lots of sucrose.
Berries tend to be small fruits, with the exception of some tomatoes, so fairly easy to eat a small portion.
Just about all the fruit/veg you eat is going to have fructose. Are you trying to say eating apples (high in fructose) are harmful?
Well, if you were to chug them down as a supersized glass of apple juice, probably yes. The composition of that juice isn't too much different from a glass of fructose-sweetened soda. A small 8 oz glass of apple juice takes about 3-4 apples or so to make. If you were to eat those three or four apples whole, you'd feel a bit full; probably take you a while to finish them, too. With the bulk and fiber of the apple removed, the equivalent amount in juice can be consumed in minutes -- without satiating your hunger.
When you suck down a super-sized soda, you are consuming the fructose equivalent of bucketfuls of apples (and possibly doing so within the space of a few minutes). It would take an eating-contest champion to physically match that performance using whole fruit.
I live on eggs, heavy cream, fatty meat and chocolate(90+%). That's how I keep my weight down, control my blood sugar, keep healthy blood lipids and get a proper supply of fat soluble vitamins. You need zero dietary carbs to live.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
It's a good thing they don't cover meat in sugar power. They don't do they ?!
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
It's a good thing they don't cover meat in sugar power. They don't do they ?!
No, but they do inject it with HFCS. If people knew everything they ate with HFCS, they'd be only buying food from the farmer's market and local butcher.
> It might help me support different (probably better) medical treatment
I think you mean dietary treatment.
Quit with the carbs and sugar. Completely.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
One of my relatives has a serious mental disorder which manifest in many ways but primarily in total lack of self control. And he has a severe sweet tooth. For example, if there is any ice cream or candy on junk food in the house, he is likely to eat all of it on one sitting. It is not at all uncommon to see a half-gallon of ice cream disappear in moments. Or a day spent in nearly continuous eating. Food that should last a week might last a day or two.
As a result of this, the relative has awful glucose control. And as a result of the mental issues, he doesn't care about this or any other aspect of his health. He simply eats whatever he wants. He will not see doctors. And no, there is nothing I can do about it.
He is dooming himself to a life of disease in old age if he manages to live that long. Honestly he's likely to be injured or killed directly by his mental behavior long before something like Alzheimers sets in.
Sig for hire.
I only buy cow meat that I know is from happy grass fed cows and locally butchered. It costs more, but the extra cost is better than suffering from Western diseases.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
I only buy cow meat that I know is from happy grass fed cows and locally butchered. It costs more, but the extra cost is better than suffering from Western diseases.
That would be a smart choice.
Amen. Why you got voted down for making sense I dunno. Maybe they disliked your grammar. Seriously, paywalled research articles are for shit, and if a penny of tax funds went into doing the research, publish it openly.
Heck, I've crunched for World Community Grid since late '04, and last year they announced that a paper was given on the results of one study. I looked forward to reading it, something towards which I'd contributed in however small a manner, only to be allowed to read one para of a paywalled paper (the $40 or so was what I had to spend on getting to doctors' appointments that month). Fuck that. I'll still crunch for WCG because I believe the project contributes to a lot of good research, but I'll no longer have the same happy attitude towards it.
It is good to hear. :-)
There is so much established opinion against low carb / paleo / primal. But if people look they can find various doctors, sportsmen and women, etc. who report good results with their patients and with their own bodies. It is something people can debate to death, but what seem to work for me, being paleo for 3 or 4 years now, I see and feel. My mother in law dismisses it as just something in my head, but when you feel your own body respond, not just for a week or a month, but for years, and not just by one metric like weight, but with becoming leaner, more clear headed, having more energy, and more emotional calm, well, a healthy scepticism is essential, and one also notices how the body is responding.
A lower sugar spike helps but in the end that sugar is still there. The so called healthy "slow release" carbs still release in the end. If the body has too much sugar available it doesn't get round to burning fat. I mean that's the argument, but you'd have to read up to see if it makes sense.
A simple point about paleo is that before agriculture 12000 years ago you just could not obtain a bowl of grains. And for about 2 million years we were evolving bigger brains as hunter gatherers. So either something radically changed in our bodies in the last 12000 years, or we are eating an unnatural amount of grains.
Links to the FDA dietary recommendations please.
There's a web site http://www.google.com/ where you can enter the information you are looking for and it gives you a list of helpful links. It's really great as you can do your own research, yourself.
You point to bread and fruit as causes of your high blood sugar levels but, for most people, the causes are: 1) Overeating 2) eating heavily-sugared high calorie items: (candy, soda pop, donuts, cake, syrups, etc.) For most of us, the sugar from eating bread and fruit is a tiny fraction of the sugar that we get from 1) and 2) so eliminating bread and fruit will not help. Your body converts portions of EVERYTHING that you eat into glucose and it is high glucose levels that the article is referring to. The glucose levels in Type 2 diabetics become too high because the body is constantly overwhelmed by the caloric load being dropped on it and becomes less reactive to the insulin hormone. To put this in simple terms, it is not bread, fruit, potatoes, or 'carbs' that are bad for you...it is TOO MUCH of those or anything else. If you don't spend portions of your day with true hunger pangs caused by low blood sugar, you are over eating.
Sounds very logical, however my personal (anecdotal) experience does not corroborate that.
I went slow carbs kind off accidental. I discovered that eating wheat was the cause of gut problems I had. I stopped (replaced mainly by Spelt, which apparently has a much lower effect on insulin production) and within weeks my clothes were too loose. Now two years later I have the same size in my jeans as I had when I was 18.. (lost about 20 kg)
If you look at the total of carbs I get today, it doesn't differ too much from before. Mostly since I never did eat much processed food or food with white sugar in it. Yet all the 'middle aged' fat is gone.
So while it sounds logical, ' you get the same amount' , the body does not work as a simple math equation. So far the best fitting explanation I've seen is the effect of insulin produced. Not even glycemic index gives you the full picture. Spelt has a high glycemic index. Yet it made the world of difference for me. But from what I've read, it does seem however that you produce less insulin.
I think the biggest mistake made is the idea that you can simply count the calories in food and expect that is all there is to it. We are not petri dishes
---
You're correct but his point is still a valid answer in the general discussion. Most of the studies I've seen point to the main problem with high carbohydrate diets the Glycemic index of the foods eaten, not the number of carbs the food has. Switching over to very low GI foods is comparable to switching to a low carb diet. The short story is the rapid insulin spike and high amounts of glucose slowly causes major damage in the human body. We have little defense against these problems because never before in our history have white bread, white rice, big starchy potatoes, and sugar water been such a large persistent part of our diet. The change in our diet has far out paced evolution.
A lower sugar spike helps but in the end that sugar is still there. The so called healthy "slow release" carbs still release in the end. If the body has too much sugar available it doesn't get round to burning fat. I mean that's the argument, but you'd have to read up to see if it makes sense.
The slow release makes all the difference. The huge insulin spike that triggers the storage of ALL fat only happens when the glucose hits all at once. Slow release insulin means that both glucose and fat can be burned simultaneously as your body continues to digest the food and introduce more glucose in to your bloodstream.
So either something radically changed in our bodies in the last 12000 years, or we are eating an unnatural amount of grains.
Or the grains changed recently. White rice and white flower are much, much more recent inventions. Add to that things like the sugar water (soda, juice, and even beer) that we drink at nearly every meal and you can see how much our much our diets have changed in just the past 100 years.
It sounds like your hinting at the Paleo diet with all this. That diet does work but that's because it's a much more strict version of a low GI diet. I'm not going to argue that low GI is just as good as Paleo but it's certainly much simpler to implement and has most of the same benefits.
For anyone who is interested in the details of why low GI diets work and how we are where we are today I recommend the book Good Calories, Bad Calories
I agree, a calorie is not a calorie. Also people are different and some of it is whether they have "damaged" their ability to handle carbs. I have always been skinny and by 40 even I was starting to show love handles but then I used to eat buckets of sugar. It never showed until it started showing.
The idea that "A calorie is a calorie" has been widely accepted as false by the medical community due to recent studies. What kinds of foods you eat greatly effects how much is stored as fat and how hungry you are.
It depends on whether you end up reducing your carb load overall. Remember diabetics still get told to eat carbs, and if they have problems with insulin, why eat any carbs?? Slow or not. I think the figure is something like I teaspoon of sugar is your normal blood sugar level. Less than 70 grams of carbs a day. If you're inside that then fine. Basically you'll get that from some veggies. So yes ask yourself why it is better to choose slow release, and then asks why no release isn't better yet?
Same experience here. I cut out all processed carbs, sodas, candy, etc. I eat no potatoes, little pasta, bread and rice. I now realize that my entire life I've felt drained of energy. Now I am sharp and awake all the time.
- For the complete works of Shakespeare: cat