Memory suffers due to high blood sugar

A group of scientists from Germany, whose work was published in the journal Neurology, found that high blood sugar is one of the causes of memory problems, even if the diagnosis of diabetes mellitus has not yet been made.

To conduct the study, scientists invited 141 people, whose average age was 63 years. At the same time, none of them had diabetes and was not even in a prediabetes state or stage of impaired glucose tolerance. For reliability, overweight people who abused alcohol or had impaired brain function were excluded from the experiment.

During the study, participants using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) measured the size of the area of ​​the hypocampus, the part of the brain that is involved in the mechanisms of emotion formation and memory consolidation (consolidation). Blood sugar levels were also measured, for this they were offered to undergo a series of tests.

It turned out that people with low blood sugar had better test results than others. So, one of the tasks suggested that the subjects repeat the list of 15 words after half an hour after they had listened to them. As a result, people with higher sugar levels remember less words. People with a value of the order of 7 mmol of glycated hemoglobin remembered two words less. In addition, in people with higher blood sugar levels, the hypocampus was smaller.

“These findings suggest that lowering blood sugar can help solve problems with memory and thinking in old age,” said one of the authors, Agnes Floel of the Charite Medical University in Berlin. He also believes that reducing calories and playing sports can help.