Diabetes affects all and every part of your body, be it the wound healing ability of your body or your energy levels. Sadly, at the mercy of the disorder, the brain is also part of this attack.
Researchers have found, however, that individuals with type 2 diabetes who can control their blood sugar levels have improved their brain health better than those who do not.
Though diabetes is a lifestyle condition that could affect your life in many ways, it can be managed easily with careful blood sugar control. Owen Carmichael, Ph.D., Professor and Director, Biomedical Imaging at Pennington Biomedical Research Center, says that in order to prevent the bad brain effects of your diabetes, it is necessary to better regulate your blood sugar.
"Don't think you can simply let yourself get all the way to the obese range, lose some of the weight, and everything in the brain is fine," Dr. Carmichael said in an interview with Healthshots.com. "The brain might have already turned a corner that it can't turn back from."
Near to 1,100 participants were examined in the new report. Three workshops focusing on nutrition, physical exercise, and social support were invited to one group of participants each year. In a regimen intended to help them shed more than 7% of their body weight in a year and sustain the weight loss, the other group changed their diet and physical activity.
Since they began the study, participants were given cognitive tests-tests for reasoning, listening, and remembering-between 8 and 13 years. The research team theorized that there might be better cognitive test scores for individuals with stronger increases in blood sugar levels, physical exercise, and weight loss.
This statement proved partly true. Reducing blood sugar levels has improved test scores. But it did not necessarily improve cognitive test scores by losing more weight and doing more.
Every little improved cognition was associated with a little change in blood sugar regulation. The lowering in blood sugar from the diabetic spectrum towards prediabetes has helped to reduce the degree in prediabetes to the safe limit.
People who lost more weight increased their capacity to perform functions: short-term memory, planning, management of impulses, attention, and the ability to move between tasks. Yet they decreased in their auditory learning and general recall.
For persons who had obesity at the outset of the research, the effects were worse. That's a sort of 'too soon, too late' post. People with diabetes who cause their obesity to go too far will be beyond the point of no return, cognition-wise, for too long.
In conclusion, the researcher notes that, relative to those with obesity, increasing physical exercise also provided more benefits for individuals who were overweight. The control of diabetes may also be the way to develop functional processes.
