AD & Type 3 Diabetes

Alzheimer’s Type 3 Diabetes 

Many researchers and practitioners these days refer to Alzheimer’s as Type 3 diabetes. That is because a high percentage of individuals with Alzheimer’s crave sugar and have excessively high blood sugar levels due in part to insulin resistance, the primary cause of diabetes.

On the other hand individuals with insulin resistance or diabetes often end up with damaged proteins and plaques in their brains, and cognitive difficulties that are characteristic of classic Alzheimer’s disease. 

In other words, there is a strong correlation between Alzheimer’s and diabetes.
But why?

First, its important to understand that the brain needs a lot of energy. Although it’s only a little over 2% of our body mass, it utilizes more than 20% of the energy we create. In other words, it’s an energy hog. And every brain knows that if it get’s low on energy, one way to fix that problem is to consume more foods that are high in sugar, or are otherwise easily converted to glucose, like refined, or what we call simple carbohydrates.

These are carbs, often made with flour, that have been stripped of their fiber, or are low fiber – like cake, pasta, pastries and most breads, and fruit drinks like orange and apple juice, or that contain a lot of added sugar like cranberry cocktail (the add lots of sugar to counter the sour), or other “naked” fruit drinks with more than 6 g of added sugar or sugar substitutes like high fructose corn syrup.  

Also if a person becomes anxious or depressed, the brain knows that some sugar with the help of it’s carrier hormone insulin will help the body create more serotonin from L-tryptophan, which has a calming effect on the nervous system. And/or some sugar is always good at such times to have on hand, to provide energy for a fight or flight.

The job of insulin is to usher glucose/sugar into cells, either for energy production or to be stored as fat for future use. 

However, if the brain does not have enough energy or needs to calm down, it may trigger a desire, if not a craving for sugar. The problem is, now days sugars are often extracted from their fibers which would generally slow them down, and can thus enter into our systems in such heavy concentrations, via fruit juices, other drinks, pastries, candy, pie and ice cream etc., that our cells get overwhelm by sugar, which if allowed to linger can cause damage to cells through a process called glycation. (We suggest you stop and read that insightful article.)

Therefore, to defend themselves from this onslaught, over time neurons become resistant to the carrier hormone insulin, produced in our pancreas to usher sugar/glucose into our cells. But if our cells become too resistant to insulin and glucose, they will no longer allow enough sugar in to meet the body’s energy needs.  

But if glucose cannot enter into our cells to be converted into energy it will be either stored as fat, or circulated throughout our body, where it can cause damage via glycation to other cells particularly proteins, in our arteries, brain, eyes and kidneys, resulting in conditions like neuropathy, impaired vision, impaired memory, and kidney failure.

Therefore, if a person is struggling with memory or other cognitive difficulties and then finds out from their doctor that they have high fasting glucose levels or A1C (a measure of glucose levels over time), then addressing those high blood sugar levels will become critical, if they want to avoid Alzheimer’s or dementia.

We don’t have enough space and won’t take the time now for a deep dive into how to overcome insulin resistance and diabetes, but you may find this TED talk by Sarah Hallberg, from Purdue U., helpful in that regard.

You may also want to review this interesting video by Dr. Rick Cohen, a functional medicine doc from Duke U, with over 20 years of experience dedicated to treating metabolic diseases, particularly diabetes. He shares three novel insights into how to lower your blood sugar by changing the order in which you eat certain foods. He also has developed a more in-depth program, which for $20 may well be worth it. The addons may or may not be, although he does have an impressive supplement you may want to consider at some point, if dietary changes are not enough. (We at ABC have no financial connection to Dr. Cohen)

OBTW if you click on the link above you can either watch or listen to this presentation, or click to read a transcript. If you are interested in the validity of what he is saying there are more than 50 references at the end of the transcript, that you can copy and paste into a doc file, where you can select the topic of interest and copy and then paste that URL into your browser to find and pull up the study or reference of interest.

You will also want to discuss this with your doctor of course, and follow their directions, which will almost always include some alterations in diet and physical activity (which is one of the best things to reduce insulin resistance), discussed in depth under Brain Health Essentials in Steps 1, 2 and 4 on stress management. Stress can adversely affect blood sugar and visa versa.