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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).
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.
Yeah, I hear DNA is acidic too. And viruses have DNA. And many diseases are caused by DNA. Whatever you do, don't eat that stuff!
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
Otto Heinrich Warburg won a nobel prize in the 30's for proving that cancer cells only eat sugar. So you might want to add that to your list as well.
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.
Sugar is the most basic kind of energy source. It's extremely important to your body, but as with everything, there are limits on what intake is healthy. (As Stephen Fry once said, 'Well of course too much is bad for you, that's what "too much" means you blithering twat. If you had too much water it would be bad for you, wouldn't it?')
Don't worry about the dementia thing too much. While it's a very strong correlation, it only increases the risk of developing dementia to 120% of normal for nondiabetics and 140% of normal for diabetics, which is still only about 1-2% of the people in their study.
As for the other consequences, it may help to understand them a bit better:
Tooth decay is caused by sugar left on your teeth. You can consume a ton of sugar and never have any tooth issues if you brush aggressively. Cavities are caused by bacteria in your mouth breaking down food left on your teeth, which causes them to release acidic byproducts. Starches like potatoes, corn, and bread are actually much more of a problem, however, and are the primary cause of cavities.
Gaining weight happens because the human body isn't prepared, evolutionarily, to regulate its own food intake very well. We have a high inclination toward absorbing and storing extra energy because that gives us the best chance of surviving a famine. Because sugar is the most basic kind of food, the body uses it as a clue to say "it's time to absorb nutrients!", hence sugary foods make you gain weight even faster. This is part of the normal purpose of the hormone insulin.
Diabetes isn't only caused by high sugar intake; it can be inherited too. Technically it's an inability to recognize sugar and absorb it, which (amongst other things) causes gradual starvation if not managed properly. Sugar causes it only if you consume a great deal for a long period of time, which makes your body start to ignore insulin. Diabetes can also be caused by pancreatic damage (type 1) or temporarily by pregnancy.
Acne is a weird issue; it's also caused by bacteria, in this case sitting on the skin. The immediate cause is a spike in testosterone, which can be induced by a number of sources, because it roughens up the surface of the skin. Sugar is one of those sources, but simply having overactive hormones as a teenager is probably a more dominant issue.
And as Slew said, sugar isn't acidic, it's just the breakdown of it that gets to be that way. This doesn't really have much of an effect on your body unless you're already suffering from acidosis (acidic blood), and you'd die very quickly if it stopped entirely, so don't worry about it.
Bio questions? Ask me to start a Q&A journal. Computer analogies available for most topics!
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?