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Researchers Find More Evidence For the Strange Link Between Sugar and Alzheimer's (sciencealert.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the cognitive-decline dept.

schwit1 shares a report from ScienceAlert: People with high blood sugar stand to experience worse long-term cognitive decline than their healthy peers, even if they're not technically type 2 diabetic, new research suggests. The findings are not the first linking diabetes with impaired cognitive functions, but they're some of the clearest yet showing blood sugar isn't just a marker of our dietary health -- it's also a telling predictor of how our brains may cope as we get older. "Our findings suggest that interventions that delay diabetes onset, as well as management strategies for blood sugar control, might help alleviate the progression of subsequent cognitive decline over the long-term," explain the researchers, led by epidemiologist Wuxiang Xie from Imperial College London. The researchers sourced their data from the English Longitudinal Study of Aging, an ongoing assessment of the health of a representative sample of the English population aged 50 and older, which began in in 2002. For its analysis, the team tracked 5,189 participants -- 55 percent women, with an average age of 66 years -- assessing their level of cognitive function between 2004-2005 to 2014-2015, spanning several waves of the ELSA study. The findings are reported in the journal Diabetologia.

65 of 99 comments (clear)

  1. Re:If you eat sugar... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    It's not an either - or !!

  2. Re:If you eat sugar... by nospam007 · · Score: 1

    "...you get Alzheimer's. If you use artificial sweetener you get dementia. Either way you're fucked."

    Just get Stevia, it's not sugar and also not artificial.
    Sweet.

  3. Re:If you eat sugar... by religionofpeas · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Learn to enjoy natural taste without added sweetness.

  4. Re:If you eat sugar... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Learn to enjoy natural taste without added sweetness.

    I enjoy the natural taste of Dr. Pepper.

  5. No shit Sherlock by niittyniemi · · Score: 5, Informative

    This is little more than confirmation of what was already known:

    Diabetes damages your vascular system. Even if your blood glucose control is excellent, you will still get periods when your BG goes high and your blood vessels will get deposits on their walls and hence restrict supply of oxygenated blood to the tissues that require it.

    The results are systemic. If you don't get enough oxygen to tissues that need it, they will die. That includes not only the well recognised bits that get damaged by diabetes: retinas, kidneys, feet etc. but stuff that most medics don't recognise: the rest of your body including your brain.

    I speak with some experience: I'm an insulin-dependent diabetic. I've got a loss of feeling in my feet although my retinas are still reasonable.

    Yet there must be ongoing damage to the fine vasculature in my nut. My experience of living with people who have dementia is that the effects are insidious and you don't initially notice it. It's effects have an exponential progress, IMO.

    I'm 55 now but I reckon within 10 years, I'll be too bonkers to put finger to keyboard. I hope to die before then.

    --
    The Machine stops.
    1. Re:No shit Sherlock by Bongo · · Score: 4, Informative

      There's quite a few people out there, from various scientists to doctors to members of the public, doing some form or low carb, paleo, primal, and even zero carb, and finding that they thrive on it (yes very controversial as it means public health advice for last 30 years has been wrong, but that's progress).

      Basically, don't eat sugar, or stuff that turns to sugar, and body does not then have to deal with damage from sugar.

      Recently I have gone zero carb [1] and I just cannot get my head around how my body simply had no need for any sugar or carbs at all.
      Naturally people have to experiment for themselves to see if this is also true for them.
      Get a blood glucose meter, and wake up feeling fine on say, 4.0 mmol/l or 72 mg/dl

      [1] More or less, there is the odd gram of a carb in cream cheese and so on.

    2. Re:No shit Sherlock by rmdingler · · Score: 1

      Take heart! Several people in my family have been, and are, insulin-dependent diabetics. Dementia is not inextricably linked to the disease, as our family's 80 year old matriarch (20 yrs insulin dependent, 2nd pacemaker) is still as sharp as ever, reads every day, remembers what she had for breakfast last Thursday, and that stupid thing you did 30 years ago.

      Aging and physical degradation are as inevitable as death, yet poorly understood. As far as we know, there has never been a time on Earth when so many humans lived so long. With enough data sets, we'll figure out how to make it more bearable.

      --
      Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.

      Ernest Hemingway

    3. Re:No shit Sherlock by Harold+Halloway · · Score: 2

      It didn't say 'inextricably linked,' merely noted a probability. A single, personal anecdote cannot be used to counter a large, long-term study like this.

    4. Re:No shit Sherlock by Gilgaron · · Score: 3, Insightful

      It isn't too surprising, eating carbs is popular because societies that could grow them outcompeted those that couldn't. If you can feed your army grain then you're going to have a bigger better army than the guys eating venison and roots since your foodstuffs are more dense in calories and keep longer. Rationing during wartime comes to mind, too. But the carbs are really just the barest energy for your body, so if you skip them you're not missing out. For the counter example you can look up rabbit starvation, but that doesn't really apply in modern times since it is easy to get some fat or fruits or veggies, but shows a situation where having carbs would be a boon. Societies are shifting from keeping anyone from starving (where carbs are king, dollar for calorie what could compare? Perhaps insects?) to optimizing for health, which will lean towards more expensive foodstuffs.

    5. Re:No shit Sherlock by Pinky's+Brain · · Score: 1

      You'll still die in the end ;)

      Keto might work fine, but in the end it's a diet for rich people and it's hardly the only diet with massive improvements over the mean. The Okinawa diet works fine too. Europe and Asia were on carb heavy diets long before the diabetes, heart attack and dementia epidemics, though we consumed less sucrose/fructose/glucose and meat of course.

      Keto might be a solution to individuals, but as a health plan for society it's unsuitable. Carbs are the staple, it's the only way the world can work.

    6. Re:No shit Sherlock by rmdingler · · Score: 1

      It didn't say 'inextricably linked,' merely noted a probability.

      Post was in the spirit of optimism. Please discontinue reading if it causes vertigo, nausea, or cantankerous behavior.

      A single, personal anecdote cannot be used to counter a large, long-term study like this.

      Are you sure? Millions of people discount scientific studies every day in favor of thousand year old fables...

      --
      Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.

      Ernest Hemingway

    7. Re:No shit Sherlock by Antique+Geekmeister · · Score: 1

      > If you can feed your army grain then you're going to have a bigger better army than the guys eating venison and roots s

      You can also grow far more food on less fertile land, transport it to troops, and store it for winter.

    8. Re:No shit Sherlock by swb · · Score: 1

      I think true zero carbs is nearly impossible without an extremely restricted diet. I think you're still about the same on the "spare change" carbs in a slightly wider diet even though you might hit 20g carbs in a day. A lot of it is locked up in fiber or feels like a byproduct of the chemistry used to assess carb content (ie, when you get 1g carbs from some seafood).

      For me personally, I found it kind of hard to sustain over a long time period (past 2 years). I found that my dietary choices became really repetitive after a while. Restaurant meals were particularly difficult, as often I found it hard to get enough to eat without ordering 3 entrees, although it did illustrate that restaurants make a lot money selling tiny meat portions with giant carb portions.

      The weight loss was good, but I only dropped about 20 and stalled out from there. Had I been able to lose another 10-20, I might have stuck with it longer, but the repetitive nature of the diet, the added effort of sustaining it in a carb-filled universe and the lack of continued weight loss caused me to mostly abandon it. I still avoid all sugary foods and many carbs, though I don't think avoiding them is really helpful, I think you need to not eat them ever for the diet to really work.

    9. Re:No shit Sherlock by ledow · · Score: 1

      Well... I'm sure that it gets looked at but it's nowhere near the accepted medical advice yet. If *you* claim it, you don't get sued for the next 50 years for the damage of you being wrong, but they do. Of course they move slower, but that's because they test it first.

      That said, I basically live off sugar... enormous amounts, and carbs through the roof.

      I once bought myself a blood glucose meter (not a cheap one, the proper diabetes-user ones) because I had a few odd symptoms (and ANY symptom is an odd symptom with me as I basically have no health problems at all) and I didn't want to waste my doctor's time if I could pre-empt some of what they would ask me to do.

      I followed the instructions to the letter, learned how to use it properly, tested regularly, even to the point of taking it into work to test throughout the day. I can tell you now... my blood glucose was smack-bang in the normal range every time I tried it. Fasting, after eating, hours later, middle of the night, whenever I tried it. It varied by pitiful amounts, and no matter what limit certain countries use to diagnose blood glucose abnormalities, I was miles away from them (your 4.0 rings a bell, because I think that's mostly what I scored, but whatever it was, it was always firmly in the "normal" range and didn't even vary when I ate).

      I think it's far too deep a topic and specific to the patient to assume that one entry "for" (you) and one "against" (me) are right, and you can only resolve it statistically, which means a whole lot more study to prove we're not just outliers who are more likely to recount their experiences that people who are just "normal"/"average".

      But I have to say... I have zero medical symptoms and I eat nothing but sugar and carbs all day long. I wouldn't dream to recommend that others follow my suit, nor that I'm somehow "right", nor that all the doctors are wrong for disagreeing.

      (P.S. A few weeks later, my tiny symptoms went away without any changes to diet whatsoever, or I confirmed them to be quite normal).

    10. Re:No shit Sherlock by ReeceTarbert · · Score: 1

      Basically, don't eat sugar, or stuff that turns to sugar [...]

      Are you aware that ultimately everything we eat gets turned into glucose with digestion, yes?

      Recently I have gone zero carb [...]

      If you really mean no fruit and no vegetables: how healthy do you think it can be in the long run?

      RT.

    11. Re:No shit Sherlock by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Alzhiimer's seems to be distinct. But I've been a Type 1 diabetic nearly 50 years, and I do have some signs of "vascular dementia" well ahead of my age peers. It's embarrassing, my IQ was 147 on the old Stanford-Binet test, and I had a cold that day. And for Type 1's like myself, it's not just the hyperglycemia vascular damage affecting kidneys, eyes, skin, etc. after decades of insult. It's the occasional hypoglycemia with poor control. I estimate that I've probably been knocked unconscious from hypoglycemia roughly 500 times in my life, especially when I had bad years due to marital difficulty.

      I agree humans are typically well past their sell-by date when we pass. Roughly 2 billion heartbeats, when most mammals get only 1 billion? Able to replace ruined joints, provide glasses and dietary support? Coronary bypasses? Vaccines? Plentiful food during local droughts? We've already effectively stretched the human lifespan extensively.

      Oh, and for Type 1 diabetics like me? Check out Dr. Faustmann's work at Mass. General Hospital. She's running a second round of human testing for a cure for most Type 1 diabetes, using the BCG vaccine in low doeses with tight blood glucose control for 30 days to treat the auto-immune problem that causes most Type 1. My fingers are crossed: it won't reverse the long term consequences I suffer, but could give my body more ability to heal and recover from damage, extending my life by decades. This includes my brain: micro-damage, such as micro-strokes, can have *some* recovery and accommodation.

    12. Re:No shit Sherlock by JoshuaZ · · Score: 1

      "Paleo" is nonsense. Low carb or low sugar diets may make sense, but Paleo isn't even well-defined. Almost none of our modern food cultivars resemble their paleolithic counterparts and already by the paleolithic different locations have wildly different diets. See this excellent talk for a good primer https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BMOjVYgYaG8.

    13. Re:No shit Sherlock by Bongo · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Maybe, but have you, for a counter example, seen Allan Savory's talks? That most of the world's land is unsuitable for agriculture, but it is suitable for grazing, and that's our place on the food chain, to eat the flesh of animals, who can graze and use their digestive systems to convert all that energy in ways we cannot do, with our small digestive systems. So in that model, it is actually grain that's the expensive food, it is just that industrialised petrochemical heavy farming made it look cheap, and ignores the externalities (god I hate that word) of bad health, and diabetes epidemics, which may bankrupt health systems. The human model is more like, some Massai guys wandering around with nothing more than goats. And assuming you are not in arid lands, those goats will eat anything.

    14. Re:No shit Sherlock by Bongo · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I basically ate a lot of sugar for 20 years, so I think I am one of those people who, perhaps like you, can shunt all that sugar out of the bloodstream, in vast quantities.

      But low blood sugar does not tell you how much insulin you had to produce to achieve that. And there's some thinking that high insulin is in itself damaging.

      And eventually, when the ability to produce that insulin craps out, then the blood sugar goes up and the the doc will worry about pre-diabetes.

      But that is so far down the road already, towards bad health, that it is a sort of double edged sword I guess -- low blood sugar looks great, but meanwhile, insulin resistance is creeping up on the body.

    15. Re:No shit Sherlock by Bongo · · Score: 1

      Basically, don't eat sugar, or stuff that turns to sugar [...]

      Are you aware that ultimately everything we eat gets turned into glucose with digestion, yes?

      Recently I have gone zero carb [...]

      If you really mean no fruit and no vegetables: how healthy do you think it can be in the long run?

      RT.

      I'm aware protein is used to make glucose. If fat is also converted... well, that's new. But in any case, point is, body can make its own glucose, so you don't need to eat any, assuming there has been enough time for the body to convert and get used to burning fat for energy. Of course if you want to do a 200m sprint then maybe you want carbs to help. But generally, if blood sugar levels are normal with zero carbs eaten, then what do you think is happening to all the carbs you would eat?

      The fruit and vegetables thing is an interesting one. I've been about ten years LCHF, always eating veg, and now trying zero carb, because as it turns out, there is an argument that plants are not necessarily as good for you as we have been told to believe. If it is of interest, there's books by Vilhjalmur Stefansson, who did a sort of controlled experiment under medical supervision, after his travels which indicated to him that meat was sufficient.

    16. Re:No shit Sherlock by Pinky's+Brain · · Score: 1

      I understand capitalism. Meat is expensive, if the level of land available could make it cheap it would be cheap.

      Massai are still healthy even after transitioning to a 50% cornmeal diet.

    17. Re:No shit Sherlock by Bongo · · Score: 1

      I am not sure where you get this idea that meat is expensive. I don’t mean eating expensive steaks all the time. Bacon, eggs, liver, heart, cream, butter - - these are not expensive items. Part of what capitalism does is try to create demand for products which are not necessarily good but nevertheless which it can mass produce and get a monopoly on, and for decades we have been taught to eat “healthy” grains, so I am not sure that this means grains are inherently cheap or meat is inherently expensive, as if the industry had just not gone down the “big grain” path, who knows what quality meat products we would have now. If the whole health industry keeps telling your customers not to eat your products, do you suppose you will be able to lower your prices for mass market?

    18. Re:No shit Sherlock by DarthVain · · Score: 1

      My mom got me to read a book on the negative impacts of sugar years ago and it was pretty eye opening. Sugar is really bad for you in a surprising number of ways so I don't doubt the claim. Unfortunately given the last 50 years of food consumerism and various sugar lobbies, it is pretty hard to avoid sugar without being pretty drastic (i.e. avoiding all and any kind of processed food). Not only that, but it is the naturally occurring sugar in "refined" products. One in particular that got my attention was the difference between white and brown rice. It isn't that white rice contains more sugar, it is because your body can break it down so quickly. So while trying to limit your sugar intake is important it is just as important (or more) to regulate how fast you break down foods into sugars. It is that which "shocks" your system and overwhelms its ability to process it properly. So the amplitude of the sugar shock and the consistency of doing so are what is going to lead to an assortment of health issues down the road.

      That said, I probably don't do enough myself, but I am probably better than many.

    19. Re:No shit Sherlock by Bongo · · Score: 2

      True, and I agree it would be a mistake to try turn it into simple minded notions like, paleo man did not drink tea so we do not drink tea. Rather, it is simply a hint about, well, if a food is relatively new, we might not be adapted to eat it, or maybe as it happens it’s fine anyway. We can already see today that different populations seem more or less susceptible to various problems. So, generally, there is the broad view that for 2 million years we developed on meat, and ten thousand years ago we started agriculture, and today different populations seem adapted in various ways. But today’s Westen diet is yet another big change, and there’s a hint in this coinciding with epidemics of obesity and diabetes.

    20. Re:No shit Sherlock by kaybee · · Score: 1

      So many diabetics have a much better life on the Keto diet. And if you have type 2 then you can eliminate medication on the Keto diet. Might be a better option than hoping to die in the next 10 years.

    21. Re:No shit Sherlock by Moridineas · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Paleo may be nonsense, but if you avoid the crazies (and there are certainly no shortage of them) and just think of it as the "in general, foods that are less processed are better for you" diet, you're probably off to a good start.

    22. Re:No shit Sherlock by kaybee · · Score: 2

      You are generally correct, however it does vary from person to person. The reality is that nobody needs to consume carbohydrates. Unlike fats and proteins there is no such thing as an essential carbohydrate. Yet everybody can handle carbohydrates in moderation. What "moderation" means depends on the person. For some that can be a bunch, for others it can be pretty small.

      Some good indicators that you eat too much carbohydrates: obesity, hypertension, heart disease, Type 2 Diabetes.

    23. Re:No shit Sherlock by ArhcAngel · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I have suffered with adult onset depression for 30 years. Last year a friend from HS talked me in to switching to a ketogenic (75% fat, 20% protein, 5% carb) diet. I was extremely skeptical but within a week the depression was gone! I started digging and found all sorts of peer reviewed research tying depression, dementia, and loss of cognitive function to a high carb diet yet I had never heard about it from any medical or nutritional professional. Most doctors have barely a cursory training in nutrition and that training is that fat kills! And it is WRONG! I've spent the last 6 months telling anybody who will listen. I am in better physical shape now than I've ever been and feel wonderful. I hope this message starts getting heard more.

      --
      "A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
    24. Re:No shit Sherlock by Zorro · · Score: 2

      Say hello to the best food for you in the world, THE EGG!

      Turns out the experts were just as wrong about eggs as they were about trans-fats.

      And eggs aren't even expensive or hard too cook.

    25. Re:No shit Sherlock by nanospook · · Score: 1

      There's no need to die from it. Go on Facebook and look for a group called Reversing Diabetes. It has like 40-45K members. It doesn't "cure" diabetes so don't get hung up on the name, but the "way of eating" WOE if followed, will roll back your A1C to a 4.5 to 5. Then your body will heal.

      --
      Have you fscked your local propeller head today?
    26. Re:No shit Sherlock by phantomfive · · Score: 1

      I just cannot get my head around how my body simply had no need for any sugar or carbs at all.

      Because your body is an omnivore, and it is good at thriving under a wide variety of different diets.

      --
      "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
    27. Re:No shit Sherlock by Rick+Schumann · · Score: 1

      zero carb

      Try participating in an endurance sport on zero carbs and tell us how you do.
      Nevermind, that was rhetorical; I know how you'll do: at best you'll plod along at a slow pace, unable to do better, because using bodyfat exclusively to supply your muscles with the fuel they need is a slow process. Furthermore your brain runs on glucose. So-called 'keto' diets are not sustainable nor are they healthy.

      By the way I am an endurance athlete (race bikes). If I didn't understand proper nutrition I wouldn't be successful at it at all, nor would I have the low bodyfat percentage I have -- and I'm 53 years old in less than 2 weeks.

      The key to this subject is pretty much the same as it is for so many things: moderation is the key. You do not have to eschew sugar (or as you say 'anything that turns to sugar, which is all carbohydrate sources) entirely 'to be healthy', you just have to be sensible about it.

    28. Re:No shit Sherlock by Baavgai · · Score: 1

      Same experience, here. Doc says your A1c is 10, here come the drugs. I say give me 90 days. After 90 days, zero carbs, a little fasting, and fewer pounds, that number was under 6. Keep up the good work.

      For anyone on the high blood sugar train wreck, which is a least half of Americans, a low carb diet should at least be considered. This is not junk science; every study you can find supports this. However, healthy diets don't sell drugs.

    29. Re:No shit Sherlock by Baavgai · · Score: 2

      eventually, when the ability to produce that insulin craps out, then the blood sugar goes up and the the doc will worry about pre-diabetes.

      No exactly. Type 2, the kind everyone has who was actually born with a functioning pancreas has, is not a failure to produce insulin so much as a failure to process it. It is called insulin resistance. There is actually so much insulin being pumped out that the liver gives up and the insulin receptors become less receptive. In response to this, the pancreas pumps out more insulin and you get a nasty feedback loop.

    30. Re:No shit Sherlock by nanospook · · Score: 1

      Just to clarify, you will eat 20 carbs a day, make up for the difference in fats plus some protein. The fats have double the calories compared to carb and require no insulin to metabolize like sugar does. Since I started this my chroniclly swollen retina went back to normal and after years of monthly injections, I haven't had one in a year. She also used to complain about seeing cholesterol in my eyes and all year they have been clean. Even if you do this part way, you are looking at much improvement. Also, if you have a lot of extra weight, doing this way of eating full on, you will lose 20lb a month as your body burns its own carbs. There are many personal experiences on the group showing before and after and many discussions with experts who have been doing it for years. I wish you luck and health.

      --
      Have you fscked your local propeller head today?
    31. Re:No shit Sherlock by Bongo · · Score: 1

      zero carb

      Try participating in an endurance sport on zero carbs and tell us how you do.
      Nevermind, that was rhetorical; I know how you'll do: at best you'll plod along at a slow pace, unable to do better, because using bodyfat exclusively to supply your muscles with the fuel they need is a slow process. Furthermore your brain runs on glucose. So-called 'keto' diets are not sustainable nor are they healthy.

      By the way I am an endurance athlete (race bikes). If I didn't understand proper nutrition I wouldn't be successful at it at all, nor would I have the low bodyfat percentage I have -- and I'm 53 years old in less than 2 weeks.

      The key to this subject is pretty much the same as it is for so many things: moderation is the key. You do not have to eschew sugar (or as you say 'anything that turns to sugar, which is all carbohydrate sources) entirely 'to be healthy', you just have to be sensible about it.

      It is common wisdom amongst sports people. Including South African sports scientist Tim Noakes, who runs and advises sports teams. He wrote the Lore of Running, and when he had his realisation, he had to tear out the chapter on carb loading. In a recent podcast he talks about recent research,

      "I have just come from a conference where my team presented on low carb diets, and we had a world class triathlete there who'd converted, and we in fact did an experiment on him, and we did show that if he ate a little more carbohydrates, his power over 20 kilometres went up, but on 100 kilometres it went down, so that was the interesting thing, that by increasing his carbs, he went down -- but what was really interesting is that he has got the highest rates of fat oxidation we've ever measured, at 90 percent of his VO2 max he was burning 1.85 grammes of fat per minute ... so this guy does an IronMan and he burns fat all the way ... "

      I gather the general idea is that the body will burn sugar first, if it is available, and if it is always available, it never gets round to adapting to burning fat, so a runner will hit the wall, even though they have a lot of energy stored in their fat, as they can't access it. By practicing low carb for months, you adapt, and then you can access those stores continuously. If you start looking round the endurance world, you'll start finding athletes who are switching.

      As for normal people like me, paleo/keto going on for ten years. And I never felt healthier (caveat being you don't know what is really going on in the body objectively, but subjectively over ten years... that's something). My recent experiment with zero carb isn't about the remaining sugar, it is about meat nutrient density versus plant matter and the various defences which plants have, and interestingly, as some other people have reported, it has changed my mood to be unusually calm, and I did go through the first couple of week wondering where my sugar would come from, but glucose readings are fine, the brain needs a bit of sugar, and the liver manufactures that from protein. However, I expect I am quite fat adapted, being LCHF for years, and practicing occasional 24 hour water-only fasts.

      So you are in the position of understanding the conventional wisdom, but like Noakes, there is a shock in discovering things can work entirely differently. He developed diabetes, even though he was running a hundred kilometres a week. Moderation sounds good as a principle, but you need to see it in context that the normal level of blood sugar is small, just one teaspoon, something like that, so "moderation" for sugar means a tiny amount of sugar daily.

  6. Re:If you eat sugar... by geekmux · · Score: 2, Informative

    "...you get Alzheimer's. If you use artificial sweetener you get dementia. Either way you're fucked."

    Just get Stevia, it's not sugar and also not artificial. Sweet.

    It's sweet, until the Sugar Mafia steps in and provides "irrefutable" evidence through many "sponsored" studies that proves Stevia causes smartphone addiction and IBS.

    Never put anything past Greed.

  7. Maybe by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Presumably, the brain tissue is changing all the time. I wonder, perhaps the human brain "on sugar" changes more frequently, or, quicker, such that bad habits or a living a life with a lazy sophisticated intellect or maybe a dulled emotional life have the effect of leading to an impaired brain in the long run I am wondering, as people get older, more lazy, or perhaps. Thinking that, as senility sets in (simply getting old, unlike 'dementia'), the brain facing a more stumped life with less impulses, less interests and less appeal, eventually defaults back to itself, as if the brain had to try relying on a basic way of functioning, simply by relying on a caricature or an abstract of sorts of the way the brain once was.

    I would like to know how many people that can truly be said to have lived a full life (family life, personal life, intellectual life, and an interesting life) still end up with that which is understood as being Alzheimer's disease.

  8. Re:If you eat sugar... by Megol · · Score: 2

    I'd say bitter. Really don't like the taste of stevia.

    Stevia is natural* as is cyanide and strychnine. IOW not relevant.
    Stevia is actually the sweetener used today that have most experimental evidence of being potentially dangerous, this is why it was only relatively recently declared as safe enough for general use in the US and the EU (and a lot of other countries).

    (* not what is sold though - it's a purified extraction often done with methanol** as a solvent)
    (** that isn't bad in itself but "natural" types often freak out when "artificial" sweeteners have any type of relation to methanol)

  9. Re:If you eat sugar... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Right-- dump something into your body that your brain thinks is sweet. It dumps insulin. Your body says "WTF do I need that for?" and starts ignoring it.

    Hello Insulin Resistance! You've got diabetes.

    Instead, why not just cut back on how much high glycemic load foods you eat?

    Also, headline misleading. People with high blood sugar have a link to Alzheimer's-- I drink normal Mt. Dew, and my blood sugar's been fine for 40 years.

  10. Already Well Known? by ytene · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Isn't this something that has been reasonably well understood for some time?

    For example, see here:-

    http://neuro.hms.harvard.edu/h...

    IIRC, the brain is pretty much the only organ in the body able to directly ingest and consume glucose from the blood stream; all the other parts of the body have to wait for glucose to be broken down into simpler compounds which they can then use. However, it's also been widely known that an overdose of glucose in the blood can be unhelpful/harmful. But it's one of the reason that people who conduct intellectually demanding work - i.e. work with a dependency on lots of cognitive processing - have a sweet tooth.

    1. Re:Already Well Known? by ledow · · Score: 1

      "Well known" versus proven is a very different thing.

      The number of well conducted, long-term, dietary-monitoring studies of people with such conditions is vanishingly small.

      Though, indeed, we suspect such conditions to be almost "diabetes of the brain", that's a relatively recent development in terms of anything but absolute conjecture.

      Using that information also doesn't necessarily help anyone - by the time you have symptoms, it's almost certainly too late to do much about it.

      But that the mechanism is somewhat sugar-dependent is only recently proven (and proven is a big word here, which is probably not appropriate yet), and that doesn't mean it's anything more than a side-effect of the condition, not necessarily a pre-requisite or cause.

      It's an interesting area... but it needs decades of study to do anything useful with it.

    2. Re:Already Well Known? by demonlapin · · Score: 1

      Nah, pretty much everything can use glucose, and red blood cells really are dependent on it (no mitochondria), but your liver can make it. The brain can run pretty well on ketones.

    3. Re:Already Well Known? by blind+biker · · Score: 1

      Reasonably understood? Perhaps, but the sugar and soda industries have poured a lot of money into research about the effects of saturated fats on heart and blood vessel health, and this has completely muddied the discussion. Butter has gotten a very undeserved bad rap in public discourse. Luckily in the last two decades there have been some high impact articles showing that saturated fats have very little to no adverse effects on cardiiovascular diseases, whereas carbohydrates do have, a very marked negative effect.

      Basically, the sugar and soda industries did the same thing with saturated fats as Intel with Spectre (basically innocuous and impossible to *practically* utilize/exploit) vs. Meltdown (nasty shit that was probably already used in the past via javascript to access data in kernel space).

      --
      "The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
  11. Blood sugar by Pinky's+Brain · · Score: 1

    Not sugar, not carbs ... fasting blood sugar levels. Not the same fucking thing.

    1. Re:Blood sugar by religionofpeas · · Score: 2

      The high blood sugar is usually the result of high dietary sugar.

    2. Re:Blood sugar by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Type 2 diabetics can have chronically elevated blood sugar with no dietary sugar at all. Most food is broken down to glucose for energy, and the brain certainly needs it. The resistance to insulin for diabetics not only allows their blood sugar to rise with no extra dietary sugar, but with only normal dietary starches and other carbohydrates. The elevated insulin levels make these people hungry. For some Type 2 diabetics, the diabetes came *first* before they started eating more and gaining weight. The lethargy from diabetes, and the weight gain from hunger, are a feedback loop that many Type 2 diabetics experience.

      Dietary sugar is a problem: it raises blood sugar _very_ quickly, especially in large, pure doses such as many snacks and treats. It's difficult to respond with insulin to that, and it's tempting to eat too much and gain weight. But it's very confusing to identify it as a pure, single cause of high blood sugar.

    3. Re:Blood sugar by kaybee · · Score: 2

      Eating lots of sugar and carbs is a huge factor in becoming a type 2 diabetic, which then means your body isn't able to regular blood sugar as effectively.

      Additionally, even in a healthy person, eating sugar causes spikes in blood sugar level. Your body corrects for it quickly but it almost certainly causes more damage than somebody who avoids eating sugar.

  12. Re:If you eat sugar... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Right-- dump something into your body that your brain thinks is sweet. It dumps insulin. Your body says "WTF do I need that for?" and starts ignoring it.

    Very good point. If you're hungry, eat meat & fat. You'll feel full in no time - and the hunger is quenched for many hours.

    A "low carb" diet can contain all you want of nice stuff like bacon. No Alzheimer risk, and you won't get fat if you don't eat sugar on the side.

    Note that "all you want" does not mean ulimited eating. Eat slowly and stop when the hunger is gone - and you won't need much food.

  13. Re:If you eat sugar... by Gilgaron · · Score: 2

    That's been my experience. I used to have my blood sugar crash on me sometimes, and it stopped once I stopped eating or drinking anything with artificial sweeteners. Full calorie yogurt instead of light stopped me wanting to snack between lunch and dinner. If I want to treat myself to a soda I just have a real one and don't worry about the calories since I only have a few a week.

  14. Re:If you eat sugar... by religionofpeas · · Score: 1

    dump something into your body that your brain thinks is sweet. It dumps insulin

    If that were true, I could cause hypoglycemia by drinking a bunch of diet coke. Doesn't happen. Try it yourself. Get a $25 glucometer and measure before and after drinking a bunch of diet drinks. You'll see there's no difference.

    I drink normal Mt. Dew, and my blood sugar's been fine for 40 years.

    High blood sugar is the end stage of type II diabetes. The beginning stages are glucose toxicity and insulin resistance, and those are already damaging to your cells. The body's first response is to crank up the amount of insulin to force the excess glucose into the cells. This can go on for decades. Only when the pancreas can no longer produce the high levels of insulin is when you start to notice your blood sugar going up.

  15. Re:If you eat sugar... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Learn to enjoy natural taste without added sweetness.

    This is the best advise (and the best way to enjoy any "taste").

    As a Greek Orthodox Christian i have the great opportunity to fast frequently every year, and in few days the most important (and longest) fasting period starts, lasting 7 weeks - while basically it is required to abstain only* from meat, fish, dairy, animal/vegetable-fat/oil, alcohol, personally in the last decade i do it like certain monks: i abstain also from salt and sugar (or any kind of added sweetener). After the first few days (of... "God damned you Jesus... " - yes, i am still a slave of the Devil...) i rediscover the natural taste of so many things that i bury under salt/sugar.

    From what i know, i believe that most/all Protestants don't fast - i think they really miss a great way to (physically) "taste God". The same applies to people of no religion also.

    * it is required to abstain also from spiritual sins... the hard part of fasting...

  16. Re:If you eat sugar... by religionofpeas · · Score: 1

    the first number anyone looks at when looking for diabetes is high blood sugar.

    That's because it's cheap and easy to measure. It would be much more insightful to do an insulin response test, but that's more expensive.

    Here's an informative video and interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

  17. Re:If you eat sugar... by Ol+Olsoc · · Score: 1

    "...you get Alzheimer's. If you use artificial sweetener you get dementia. Either way you're fucked."

    Just get Stevia, it's not sugar and also not artificial. Sweet.

    It's sweet, until the Sugar Mafia steps in and provides "irrefutable" evidence through many "sponsored" studies that proves Stevia causes smartphone addiction and IBS.

    Never put anything past Greed.

    Now come on - it's only Fructose that's bad for you.

    Eat sucrose, the healthy sugar! 8^/

    --
    The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
  18. Re:First uhhh by DontBeAMoran · · Score: 1

    First sugar?

    --
    #DeleteFacebook
  19. Re:If you eat sugar... by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

    Stevia is actually the sweetener used today that have most experimental evidence of being potentially dangerous, this is why it was only relatively recently declared as safe enough for general use in the US and the EU (and a lot of other countries).

    The experimental evidence on stevia so far is that it is superior to basically all other sweeteners, potentially going so far as to help your body regulate blood sugar. Almost the only other sweetener that doesn't cause a strong glycemic response is erythritol, which may also have a moderating response. You can buy the two sweeteners combined into one product under a number of brand names, or just work out yourself how to get them into the same recipe. For example, my pumpkin pie recipe has evolved to using coconut milk/cream (I use Mae Ploy, which is the best brand I've found, it's significantly better than everything else) in place of condensed milk, and erythritol+stevia (both bought in bulk) as the sweetener, with no other changes except increasing the quantity of spices used. If I make a normal pie and my current recipe and put them next to one another, I defy you to tell me which is which. You'll probably guess wrong.

    --
    "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
  20. Re:If you eat sugar... by avandesande · · Score: 1

    Six months or so without added sugar and you can't stand the taste of it.

    --
    love is just extroverted narcissism
  21. Re:If you eat sugar... by yithar7153 · · Score: 1

    "...you get Alzheimer's. If you use artificial sweetener you get dementia. Either way you're fucked."

    Just get Stevia, it's not sugar and also not artificial. Sweet.

    The nice thing about Truvia is it comes with erythritol. I don't mind the taste of Splenda but it contains maltodextrin and dextrose (so you can measure it), which is still sugar the bacteria in my mouth can metabolize. Erythritol has been shown to be more effective than xylitol.

  22. Re:If you eat sugar... by postbigbang · · Score: 1

    Stevia is not fructose. Sweeteners fall into sugars, sugar alcohols, and sweeting agents that produce little to no glycemic pancreatic reaction.

    Stevia is also blended with other non-glycemic agents, or sugar alcohols to produce a reasonable sweetener that doesn't cause the beta cells in your pancreas to go nuts in response, or otherwise raise the evidence in the A1C score.

    Do your homework.

    --
    ---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
  23. Re:If you eat sugar... by postbigbang · · Score: 1

    Truvia sounds good superficially, but it still contains SUGARS that produce glycemic reactions.

    Erythritol is good, and can also be mixed with stevia, or monk fruit Ia sugar alcohol) or others in combos that both taste reasonably good and importantly, DON'T produce a glycemic reaction. That's the whole point, as in stop the reaction. This means stanching sugar and carbs in all of their forms.

    It's an industry marketing tool called "good carbs" or "complex carbs" that are supposed to be "good" for you. It's all propaganda. There really are no "good carbs". Truvia mixes sugar in-- and that's bad for you, op cit.

    --
    ---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
  24. Re:If you eat sugar... by Ol+Olsoc · · Score: 1

    Stevia is not fructose. Sweeteners fall into sugars, sugar alcohols, and sweeting agents that produce little to no glycemic pancreatic reaction.

    Stevia is also blended with other non-glycemic agents, or sugar alcohols to produce a reasonable sweetener that doesn't cause the beta cells in your pancreas to go nuts in response, or otherwise raise the evidence in the A1C score.

    Do your homework.

    Sure, but I was posting about the sugar mafia, not Stevia.

    --
    The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
  25. Re:If you eat sugar... by postbigbang · · Score: 1

    And a Mafia it is. Read Gary Taubes' The Case Against Sugar.

    --
    ---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
  26. Re:Yeah, keep drinking your alcohol... by WillAffleckUW · · Score: 1

    ...and keep telling yourself that sugar is the *real* demon.

    Well, it is a complex hydrocarbon chain, so it is similar, it's just the processes to break it down are more taxing on the liver.

    --
    -- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
  27. Wim Hof Method by george14215 · · Score: 1

    Try the Wim Hof method for beneficially stressing your vascular system. Check out the book What Doesn't Kill Us...

  28. Glycation by manu0601 · · Score: 1

    The result is not surprising. Glucose is a chemically reactive molecule, it binds with various tissues in the body, harming them in the process. The process is called glycation.

    With diabetes, glucose levels are always high, and the damage is maximum. But even without diabetes, more glucose spikes will cause more damage . It is not surprising the brain also takes its toll in the process.