Connections between high blood sugar and dementia | Hacker News Reader

Connections between high blood sugar and dementia

theatlantic.com

79 pointsshawndumas12 comments

The massive cover up of sugar's toxic nature over the past 70 years has led to countless premature deaths. I would estimate it's in the millions.

There is a special place in hell for those involved. And boy do some scientists sell their souls on the cheap. So very sad.

At /r/keto many people also state that their blood pressure and cholesterol levels improve when cutting out carbs.

And here's again a motivator to at least try to reduce the intake.

I'm pretty sure diet filled with legumes, leafy greens, has the same result.

There is no blood sugar spike when you eat 1500kcal of beans. It's slow releasing carb filled with fiber.

I'm pretty sure at /r/plantbaseddiet or /r/vegan many people state that their blood sugar or cholesterol improves.

Right yes, I didn’t mean for the high-fat variant. Just in general, low-carb, in any combo, seems to be a healthy option.

I eat about 60-70% of calories in carbs. Would that be high carb? Most of my carbs come from legumes, I get no sugar spikes, am T1 diabetic and need insulin mostly to replenish it every morning, not after every meal.

Carbs become glucose, and if those carbs are refined they give you a glucose spike, your body needs to generate then the right amount of insulin to neutralize that sugar, insulin transforms the sugar into fat, a type of fat that is hard to eliminate. If your body underestimates the amount of insulin that excess of glucose will cause your circulatory system and other tissues to swallow, if it overestimates it, it will generate too much insulin that will remove too much glucose from your blood and you will feel tired and hungry.

We have long vilified the wrong white crystal substance for increases in blood pressure.

Good reading on the matter is The Salt Fix.

I think we will eventually realise that all degenerative brain diseases (Alzheimer's, dementia, Parkinson's, etc.) can in some way be caused by high carbohydrate (i.e. sugar - that's what it ultimately gets broken down into) intake. Byproducts of breaking down sugar in the blood stream gradually dissolve the blood-brain barrier. Depending on which part of the brain gets effected worse, results in a different neurodegenerative condition.

A well referenced book on the matter: https://books.google.de/books?id=O5EODgAAQBAJ (unfortunately the name is designed for hype, but the contents are solid)

> Byproducts of breaking down sugar in the blood stream gradually dissolve the blood-brain barrier.

HUH?! Where did you get this "fact" from, I'm curious? The causal link you refer to might be true, but the "mechanism" you describe sounds antivac-class rubbish... read up some more before spreading dubious infos please.

This crosses into incivility. Please don't do that on HN, even when someone is wrong.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Can we try to avoid getting personal?

There is evidence suggesting diabetics are more susceptible to conditions related to elevated blood-brain barrier transport. So that might not exactly translate to "dissolving", but the effect is the same.

"Changes in plasma glucose levels (hyper- or hypoglycemia) have been associated with altered BBB transport functions"

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4306190/

[2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17143608

The sources look solid but you seem to mix eating carbohydrates with being diabetic.

On dietary risk factors, i think sugar and bad fats are common culprits for t2 diabetes. I dont think carbs is as significant itself.

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