When you cook and eat a meal, the vegetables should be chopped up, not your ability to remember what you ate. But certain foods can do to your brain what a knife does to carrots.
It’s a case of simple sugars. They’re linked to beta-amyloid, the plaque that builds up in the brains of Alzheimer’s patients and snuffs out memories.
Processed foods that contain simple sugars can cause your blood sugar to spike. And tests at the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis show that those spikes can set off neurological processes in the brain that lead to Alzheimer’s disease.
Those blood sugar peaks are especially dangerous if you already have diabetes.
The tests demonstrate that when levels of glucose in the blood climb, it can accelerate the development of amyloid beta in the brain. Amyloid beta is the type of plaque that disrupts memory and drives the destructive processes of Alzheimer’s.
“Our results suggest that diabetes, or other conditions that make it hard to control blood sugar levels, can have harmful effects on brain function and exacerbate neurological conditions such as Alzheimer’s disease,” warns researcher Shannon Macauley.
Macauley found that when blood sugar climbs, it accelerates the activity of neurons in the brain that leads to the formation of amyloid beta. This harmful development is rooted in the function of what are called KATP channels that are located on brain cells.
“Given that KATP channels are the way by which the pancreas secretes insulin in response to high blood sugar levels, it is interesting that we see a link between the activity of these channels in the brain and amyloid beta production,” Macauley says. “This observation opens up a new avenue of exploration for how Alzheimer’s disease develops in the brain as well as offers a new therapeutic target for the treatment of this devastating neurologic disorder.”
Macauley views the results of this study as information that could be used to develop new drugs to fight Alzheimer’s. But you shouldn’t keep eating sugary treats and hope that someday medical science will devise an expensive pharmaceutical that can save your brain from the effects of your eating habits.
Instead, put your fork to work today and eat the foods that help your brain. Avoid the foods that lead to forgetfulness:
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