Your Brain on Sugar

In this blog, you may have already read about how insulin can wreak havoc on the body. This refers to the excessive insulin released under conditions of insulin resistance. In other words, if you eat too much sugar, you release too much insulin and over time.... your body stops listening to insulin. This is bad.

A new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences shows that insulin may actually help treat Alzheimer's disease. Dr. Klein, one of the authors of the study, is quoted as saying, "Sensitivity to insulin can decline with aging, which presents a novel risk factor for Alzheimer's disease."

In other words, insulin resistance can set you up for Alzheimer's disease. When you have insulin resistance, you need even more insulin to get the message across to your body. It appears that in this case, insulin may have some protective effect on the brain... (brains that are having trouble processing insulin).

This does not mean you should eat more sugar to produce more insulin to protect the brain! It means you should carefully regulate blood sugar so you don't develop insulin resistance so you can save your brain.