Bitter Truth: Excess Sugar And Alzheimer's Have Deeper Bonds Than We Knew

If any further proof was needed that this is the age of the fight against sugar, here it is. Not only is high blood sugar the reason for a host of bodily ailments, sugar might also be causing our cognitive abilities to decline faster, causing diseases like Alzheimer’s and dementia.

A longitudinal study published last week in Diabetologica found people with high blood sugar, regardless of whether it made them diabetic or not, had a faster rate of cognitive decline. The study was conducted on 5,189 people and the variables tested again and again over a period of 10 years – which is why we ought to take it seriously.

Furthermore, the “path” from excess sugar to Alzheimer’s is not always through type 2 diabetes; in other words, you might technically not be diabetic but the high sugar in your blood might be causing your cognition to weaken.

Earlier too, there have been several studies that connect diabetes and Alzheimer’s as elevated levels of insulin are found to significantly increase the risk of Alzheimer’s. Another study had found that diabetes can weaken blood vessels, which increases the chance of mini-strokes in the brain, causing some forms of dementia. Extra fat in obese people releases cytokines (inflammatory proteins), which can also cause cognitive deterioration – the first step in the journey to dementia.

Of course, this does not mean that non-nutritional factors are not at work. But the crucial point about diet is that, unlike our genes, it is a risk factor that is in our control.

As Rosebud Roberts, a professor of epidemiology at the Mayo Clinic says, science is making it clearer to us that what we eat is a big factor, if not the biggest, in “maintaining control of our destiny”. And it looks like we have to master this control while still young if we wish for robust cognitive health.