By: Casey Thaler
Are Alzheimer’s and sugar linked somehow? Read on to find out how excess sugar may increase your risk of dementia.
Even if you’re actively trying to decrease your sugar consumption, beware — conventional food companies quietly add sugar to nearly every food, making it hard to buy even a jar of tomato sauce without added sweetness.
At the same time, Alzheimer’s rates have been skyrocketing along with obesity and the underlying metabolic syndrome. This may seem like a coincidence, but data suggests there could be a link between excess sugar and Alzheimer’s disease (1). Since Alzheimer’s is the third leading cause of death in the United States, this is a very alarming issue.
Dr. Perlmutter, author of the best-selling book Grain Brain, suggests there are a wide variety of neurological issues attributing to the standard Western diet. Additionally, Harvard University’s Dr. Emily Deans suggests new evidence pointing to correlations between the standard Western diet and smaller brain size (2).
While there is no cure for Alzheimer’s disease, a small UCLA study recently revealed how partial memory loss could be reversed (3). How did researchers do this? By following a Paleo-like template. This landmark study and its supporting data continues to notion that a high-carb/ high-sugar diet may not be good for a a person’s mental health.
And without mental health, what kind of health can we really have?
The most plausible theory describes Alzheimer’s deriving from the amyloid precursor protein binding to a death receptor 6 (DR6) — often found in the affected brain areas (6).
How Does Alzheimer’s Happen?
One in ten people over age the age of 65 have Alzheimers—and those numbers are increasing. As the baby boomers age (the first generation with a high sugar diet for most of their life) the more Alzheimer’s disease grows. From a science perspective, Alzheimer’s is typically seen via problems with memory, judgment, and thinking.
Memory loss and dementia increases with Alzheimer’s and is a result of your brain malfunctioning. While there are some medications to help with symptoms, there is no cure. Genetics play a large factor in Alzheimer’s, but it seems that epigenetics (i.e. your diet and lifestyle) also play a major part in the disease development (5).
Mechanistically, plaques and tangles appear in the brain and lead to problematic buildups. Scientists are still debating what exactly causes Alzheimer’s, but there are a few different hypotheses. One of the first guesses was the cholinergic hypothesis, which suggests that the disease was caused by a reduced synthesis of the neurotransmitter acetylcholine.
Unfortunately, drugs designed to target this area have not been very successful. Others suggest that mechanisms of cholinergic effects result in large buildup of amyloid, which may lead to an “inflamed brain.”
