Olga Khazan—The Atlantic:
In recent years, Alzheimer’s disease has occasionally been referred to as “type 3” diabetes, though that moniker doesn’t make much sense. After all, though they share a problem with insulin, type 1 diabetes is an autoimmune disease, and type 2 diabetes is a chronic disease caused by diet. Instead of another type of diabetes, it’s increasingly looking like Alzheimer’s is another potential side effect of a sugary, Western-style diet.
In some cases, the path from sugar to Alzheimer’s leads through type 2 diabetes, but as a new study and others show, that’s not always the case.
Fascinating short read on the not unheard-of connection between blood sugar levels and cognition.
This dovetails with a longer article in The New York Times Magazine from years ago, Is Sugar Toxic? Though an investment of, say, 45-minutes, that article goes a long way to explain the problem with our sugary American diet, and the disaster that is high fructose corn syrup. Thankfully, consumers have been pushing back against HFCS in the years since that article was published, and its presence in the food supply is diminishing.
Both reads are worth your time.
#sugar #AlzheimersDisease #toxicity #health
A Random Stroll 