Alzheimer’s: Type 3 Diabetes?

The idea that Alzheimer’s is a type of diabetes (say, Type 3) has been circulating since 2005 and now, thanks to a story in New Scientist (“Food for Thought: What You Eat May Be Killing Your Brain”), the connection between poor diet and Alzheimer’s is becoming more convincing. Mainstream health advocates are finally beginning to understand what health nuts have known for a long time, that processed and junk food is a fast track toward dis-ease.

There are two types of diabetes: the type you’re born with (Type 1) and the type you “get,” Type 2. For years it was referred to as “adult onset diabetes” until children started getting it (Type 2 is brought about by a host of factors of which one is overeating like we do in #Merica). But, to critically look at the potentiality of Type 3 Diabetes, we need to understand how insulin works in the body, so here’s a brief lesson from the article:

“We all need insulin: in non-diabetics, it’s released to help cells take in the blood sugar (glucose) they need for energy. But the cells can hold only so much; excess sugar is first stored as glycogen, and — when there’s enough of that — as fat. (Blood sugar doesn’t come only from sugar, but from carbohydrates of all kinds; easily digested carbohydrates flood the bloodstream with sugar.) Insulin not only keeps the blood vessels that supply the brain healthy, it also encourages the brain’s neurons to absorb glucose, and allows those neurons to change and become stronger. Low insulin levels in the brain mean reduced brain function.
Type 1 diabetes, in which the immune system destroys insulin-producing cells in the pancreas, accounts for about 10 percent of all cases. Type 2 diabetes is chronic or environmental, and it’s especially prevalent in populations that overconsume hyperprocessed foods, like ours. It’s tragically, increasingly common — about a third of Americans have diabetes or pre-diabetes — and treatable but incurable. It causes your cells to fail to retrieve glucose from the blood, either because your pancreas isn’t producing enough insulin or the body’s cells ignore that insulin.”

Now, when your brain starts ignoring insulin (“insulin resistance”) you start to lose memory and become disoriented. You even might lose aspects of your personality. Just like with Alzheimer’s.

Over one hundred years ago Alois Alzheimer, a neuropathologist, noticed -but didn’t understand why- a different form of protein was taking the place of normal brain cells. What we are beginning to see is that those beta amyloid plaques may be formed by a lack of insulin (insulin resistance). While diabetes doesn’t cause Alzheimer’s, it seems they have the same root: an over consumption of the “foods” that disrupt normal insulin function. (And people with diabetes are twice as likely to get Alzheimer’s.)

More from the article:

“Suzanne de la Monte, a neuropathologist at Brown University, has been working on these phenomena in humans and rats. When she blocked the path of insulin to rats’ brains, their neurons deteriorated, they became physically disoriented and their brains showed all the signs of Alzheimer’s. The fact that Alzheimer’s can be associated with low levels of insulin in the brain is the reason why increasing numbers of researchers have taken to calling it Type 3 diabetes, or diabetes of the brain. “

If the rate of Alzheimer’s (more than 115 million new cases are projected worldwide in the next 40 years) continues to rise, like Type 2 diabetes has, nearly tripling in the US in the last 40 years, we will find ourselves overwhelmed by a hopeless pandemic. We need a plan, now.

The more we study the more we see a link between diet and dementia and if that’s the case, then Alzheimer’s isn’t merely a luck of the draw, but a condition that can be prevented with diet and exercise.

If you are overweight and you need help, please click here so you can learn how I radically changed my diet and life years ago. You are not alone. Help is available.

XO- Erin

Source: NY Times