How Type 2 Diabetes Affects The Brain

How Type 2 Diabetes Affects the Brain

Reductions in both insulin production and an impaired physiological response to insulin release, which lead to elevated blood sugar, are hallmarks of type 2 diabetes. Less well-known are the cognitive effects of the metabolic disorder. “Diabetes does affect a number of cognitive domains, the main being executive functions, memory, learning, and concentration,” said Rodrigo Mansur, a psychiatry clinical and research fellow at the University of Toronto.
These effects aren’t always dramatic, explained Yong-Wook Shin, an associate professor of psychiatry at the University of Ulsan College of Medicine in South Korea. When it comes to the brain, he said, type 2 diabetes has “a subtle effect, but it can be detected.”
That type 2 diabetes can affect memory, learning, and concentration makes sense, according to computational cognitive neuroscientist Dae-Jin Kim of the Indiana University Bloomington. “Our brain consumes about 25 percent of the blood in our body,” he noted. “So, the glucose in our blood should affect our brain the most.”
Two recent studies have approached this diabetes-brain connection from different angles. The first, published last month (June 23) in PLOS ONE, examined brain communication in patients with poorly controlled type 2 diabetes.
“In terms of the brain architecture,” said Indiana University’s Kim, an author of the study, “it can be assumed that specific functions are happening in single brain regions. For example, our vision is located in the visual cortex of the brain and our auditory function is located in temporal regions of br Continue reading

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How Menopause Affects Type 2 Diabetes

When it comes to menopause, there are women who welcome it and women who dread it. There’s also a lot of discussion about whether this transition is something that should be “treated” or left to occur naturally without the use of medication.
But for some women, particularly those with type 2 diabetes, menopause is an even more complicated topic. Not only does it signal the end of childbearing years — it can lead to other physical changes, too.
Why Menopause Is Different With Diabetes
If you usually ovulate every 28 days or so, your cycle may begin to vary as you approach menopause. You may go 40 days or longer between periods or at other times find that your periods come only a couple of weeks apart.
As this is happening, the levels of your estrogen and progesterone hormones are changing as well. These hormonal fluctuations can affect your blood glucose levels, which can cause problems for women with type 2 diabetes.
To avoid complications from type 2 diabetes, it’s essential to keep your blood glucose levels as even as possible — something that can be tricky during menopause.
Recognizing Menopause Symptoms
Some symptoms of menopause can be confused with signs of too high or too low blood glucose, including dizziness, sweating, and irritability. With symptoms being so similar, it may be hard to tell which is which. Rather than guessing, you should check your blood glucose levels when you’re experiencing these effects. If the symptoms persist or get more uncomfortable, try talking to your doctor about treatment options.
Researchers have found that estrogen leve Continue reading

Diabetes in Dogs

Even dogs eating healthy diets can suffer from diabetes. As with diabetes in humans, sometimes a dog’s body’s stops producing enough insulin or the cells of a dog’s body are unable to use the insulin that is produced. When either condition occurs, the result is diabetes mellitus, which causes excessive thirst and urination and extreme hunger accompanied by weight loss. To stabilize sugar levels, insulin therapy is the treatment at the outset and is usually required for the life of the dog.
Summary
Diabetes mellitus is a disease that manifests as an inability of the animal’s body to use carbohydrates (sugars) properly. This occurs either because the pancreas does not manufacture sufficient quantities of the hormone the body requires for this function (insulin) or because the body’s cells no longer recognize insulin properly.
The downside of this fundamental aberration in carbohydrate utilization is that these basic, energy providing nutrients (sugars) are not able to enter the body’s cells to “feed” them. Instead, they linger in the bloodstream while the body itself literally starves.
By way of handling this starvation state, the body does things like start to break down certain tissues, fats for example, and mobilize stored sugar (glucose) in the body to attempt to generate energy with which to feed itself. In the absence of the insulin required to allow sugars to gain entry to the cells, these efforts typically lead to a dangerous metabolic state called ketosis. Moreover, when sensitive tissues like the brain don’t receive the required amount of energy, s Continue reading

Diabetics: Roche says it can save you big money

Type 2 diabetes can wreak havoc on your health. While lifestyle changes can help keep diabetes under control, many patients require oral medications or insulin injections as forms of treatment, too. Watch the video for how diabetes affects your body. Time
Pharmaceuticals maker Roche overhauled its blood glucose monitoring system and introduced a new discounting offer that it says could save uninsured diabetics by thousands of dollars per year.
The move could help alleviate political pressure as the drug industry faces mounting scrutiny over prices. It also comes amid increasing competition among blood glucose monitoring makers as diabetes rates rise.
The new system pairs a free blood glucose meter with a smartphone app and discounted test strips. With some diabetics paying as much as $2 a strip for other offerings, the new Roche system paired with a free savings card could cut costs to as little as 40 cents per strip in the first 50-count box, then 20 cents per strip in subsequent boxes.
The nation's 29-million diabetics pay widely varying prices for testing products, in part because many of them are covered by insurance. Roches' move is likely to provide the biggest help to the uninsured. The average American diabetic paid $1,922 in out-of-pocket expenses for care in 2013, compared to $738 for someone without the condition, according to the Health Care Cost Institute.
For "the average patient, managing diabetes and acquiring all of the testing and therapy supplies can be very difficult to navigate, really complex and very often very expensive," said Brad Moore, head of Continue reading

Can people with type 2 diabetes eat honey?

People with diabetes are often told they should not eat sweets and other foods that contain sugar because they may cause a spike in blood sugar levels. So, could honey be a healthful alternative to sugar-filled sweets and snacks?
Blood sugar (glucose) levels are the amounts of sugar found in the blood. Sugar is the body's primary source of energy.
Insulin is secreted from the pancreas to maintain blood sugar. The bodies of people with diabetes do not produce enough insulin or use it correctly.
Contents of this article:
What are carbohydrates?
Carbohydrates, which are broken down into sugar provide the body with most of its needed energy. Carbohydrates make up half of recommended daily caloric intake.
Carbohydrates are present in most foods, including:
fruits
vegetables
milk
grains
beans
honey
white sugar
brown sugar
candy
desserts
The amount and type of carbohydrates consumed affect blood sugar levels. To keep their blood sugar at a safe level, people with diabetes should limit their total carbohydrate intake to between 45 grams (g) and 60 g per meal or less. As such, it is important to choose healthful, non-processed, high-fiber carbohydrates and control portion sizes.
What is honey?
Raw honey starts out as flower nectar. After being collected by bees, nectar naturally breaks down into simple sugars and is stored in honeycombs. The honeycombs trigger the nectar to evaporate, which creates a thick, sweet liquid known as honey.
Honey, like other sugars, is a condensed source of carbohydrates. One tablespoon of honey contains at least 17 g of carbohydrates.
While this amount Continue reading