Study: Blood Sugar Control Related to Age-Related Cognitive Decline
Keeping your blood sugar levels under control through diet and exercise may influence more than just your waistline…according to a new study, it may also protect your brain.
Maintaining blood sugar levels, even in the absence of disease, may be an important strategy for preserving cognitive health, suggests a study published by researchers at Columbia University Medical Center (CUMC). The study appeared in the December issue of Annals of Neurology.
Senior moments, also dubbed by New York Times Op-Ed columnist David Brooks as being “hippocampically challenged,” are a normal part of aging. Such lapses in memory, according to this new research, could be blamed, at least in part, on rising blood glucose levels as we age. The findings suggest that exercising to improve blood sugar levels could be a way for some people to stave off the normal cognitive decline that comes with age.
And we’re not talking about extreme elevations in blood glucose, either…
Researchers said the effects can be seen even when levels of blood sugar, or glucose, are only moderately elevated, a finding that may help explain normal age-related cognitive decline, since glucose regulation worsens with age.
…“If we conclude this is underlying normal age-related cognitive decline, then it affects all of us,” said lead investigator Dr. Scott Small, associate professor of neurology at Columbia University Medical Center. The ability to regulate glucose starts deteriorating by the third or fourth decade of life, he added.
If this doesn’t motivate people to eat better and exercise on a regular basis, I don’t know what will. It certainly motivates ME.
Personally, I have no fears of aging w/respect to my vanity: while I’m not crazy about the thought of gray hair or wrinkles, that stuff goes with the territory. It certainly beats the alternative, which is “live fast, die young, and leave a good-looking corpse.” But the thought of losing my “smarts” scares the hell out of me. Both my grandmother and mother had significant cognitive issues with age – not Alzheimer’s, but this is perhaps a distinction without a difference. Mom helped take care of Grandma over the last few years of her life…and then I ended up supervising Mom. But the buck stops here: I have no intention of passing this particular “inheritance” to my own kids, if there’s something I can do to prevent it.
