How’s your brain doing right now?
Are you thinking as clearly as you’d like to be? Are you not remembering things like you used to?
Or are you experiencing a little bit of brain fog? You know, when it feels like your thoughts have to traverse through a cloud of cotton before getting to you.
Well, if you’re not experiencing any of these but have diabetes, then your time is coming. (Sorry!)
It has been well-established for quite some time that diabetes negatively affects the 
brain. Dementia, poor memory, reduced cognitive functioning, and even mood disorders can result from a diabetes diagnosis.
But how does all of this actually happen?
Put simply: diabetes reduces overall brain matter. Meaning, diabetes eats away at your brain until fewer cells are available to function.
A study out of South Korea examined 50 obese people diagnosed with type 2 diabetes, 50 healthy weighing people with type 2 diabetes, and 50 healthy weighing people without diabetes.
The diabetes diagnosis was fairly new, with most participants being diagnosed in the past 5 years. All diabetic participants were attempting to make lifestyle changes to cure themselves of the disease.
The researchers administered MRIs and cognitive tests to determine cognitive functioning and brain matter density.
The MRI demonstrated that those with diabetes had reduced cortical thickness in several areas of the brain. Particularly, there was a detrimental effect on the temporal lobes, where similar effects can be found in people with Alzheimer’s disease.
The cognitive tests revealed the critical thinking and memory was significantly reduced in the diabetic participants compared to the non-diabetic participants.
The authors of the study share that these negative effects on the brain are probably due to insulin resistance, inflammation throughout the body, and poor blood sugar management (each of which is major characteristics of diabetes).
So, what’s the moral of the story? Get your diabetes under control to get your brain back!
[expand title=”References“]
WebMD. URL Link. Retrieved May 1, 2017.
[/expand]
