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   LewRockwell.com   
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   High-Carb Diet May Increase Your Risk of Dementia   
   By Joseph Mercola   
   Mercola.com   
   March 15, 2014   
      
   By Dr. Mercola   
      
   If you're interested in protecting your brain health and preventing dementia,   
   including Alzheimer's disease, the research is pouring in in support of a key   
   dietary strategy... namely, avoiding sugar and carbohydrates, including gluten.   
      
   Last year, I interviewed Dr. David Perlmutter--probably the leading natural   
   medicine neurologist in the US, from my perspective--whose New York Times   
   best-selling book, Grain Brain, has brought this issue to the forefront of   
   medicine.   
      
   He recently expanded on this topic in an interview in Alternative and   
   Complementary Therapies,1 where he cites even more research showing a   
   high-carb diet may be detrimental to your brain.   
      
   Higher Blood Sugar Levels Are Bad for Your Brain   
      
   According to recent research published in Neurology, chronically higher blood   
   sugar levels have a profoundly negative influence on cognition, which the   
   researchers believe is "possibly mediated by structural changes in   
   learning-relevant brain areas."2   
      
   One of the most important aspects of the study, however, was that these   
   negative effects occurred even in people without type 2 diabetes, which   
   suggests even if you're "healthy," keeping your blood sugar levels lower than   
   what is typically considered "   
   normal" is probably still best for your brain health. The researchers noted:   
      
   "...strategies aimed at lowering glucose levels even in the normal range may   
   beneficially influence cognition in the older population."   
      
   This isn't entirely surprising, as separate research has found that impaired   
   insulin response was associated with a 30 percent higher risk of Alzheimer's   
   disease,3and overall dementia and cognitive risks were associated with high   
   fasting serum insulin,    
   insulin resistance, impaired insulin secretion, and glucose intolerance.   
      
   However, the new study and another published last year4 suggest higher blood   
   sugar levels may be detrimental to your brain even if you don't have any of   
   the former conditions.   
      
   It's becoming increasingly clear that the same pathological process that leads   
   to insulin resistance and type 2 diabetes may also hold true for your brain.   
   As you over-indulge on sugar and grains, your brain becomes overwhelmed by the   
   consistently high    
   levels of insulin and eventually shuts down its insulin signaling, leading to   
   impairments in your thinking and memory abilities, and eventually causing   
   permanent brain damage.   
      
   High-Carb Diet May Increase Your Dementia Risk by 89 Percent   
      
   In one of the most striking studies on carbohydrates and your brain,   
   researchers revealed that those who consumed higher amounts of carbs in their   
   diets had an 89 percent increased risk of dementia. As for those whose diets   
   were highest in fat... their    
   risks decreased by 44 percent.5 Dr. Perlmutter says:6   
      
   "We live with this notion that a calorie is a calorie, but at least in terms   
   of brain health, and I believe for the rest of the body as well, there are   
   very big differences between our sources of calories in terms of the impact on   
   our health.   
      
   Carbohydrate calories, which elevate blood glucose, are dramatically more   
   detrimental to human physiology, and specifically to human health, than are   
   calories derived from healthful sources of fat.   
      
   The diet that I recommend--high in fat and low in carbohydrates--has simply   
   been what we have eaten for a million years, so it has a bit of a track   
   record. The notion that this is a revolutionary new diet has to be put into   
   context. In reality, the diet    
   that people are now consuming. This is dreadfully high in carbohydrates and   
   low in fat, as our governmental institutions are recommending, is the biggest   
   challenge to human physiology that we have ever experienced, and this is very,   
   very worrisome."   
      
   One of the reasons why a high-carbohydrate diet is so damaging is due to   
   fructose. You may already know I am passionate about warning of the dangers of   
   refined fructose. There is NO question in my mind that regularly consuming   
   more than 25 grams of    
   fructose per day will dramatically increase your risk of dementia and   
   Alzheimer's disease. Consuming too much fructose will inevitably wreak havoc   
   on your body's ability to regulate proper insulin levels.   
      
   Research also shows that rats fed fructose syrup showed significant impairment   
   in their cognitive abilities--they struggled to remember their way out of the   
   maze. They were slower, and their brains showed a decline in synaptic activity.   
   Their brain cells had trouble signaling each other, disrupting the rats'   
   ability to think clearly and recall the route they'd learned six weeks   
   earlier.7 There is another component of a high-carb diet that may be equally   
   as damaging, however.   
      
   Gluten Sensitivity May Also Harm Your Brain   
      
   Dr. Perlmutter stresses that gluten sensitivity is involved in most chronic   
   disease, including those affecting your brain, because of how gluten affects   
   your immune system. Unfortunately, many people, physicians included, still   
   believe that if you don't    
   have celiac disease or digestive symptoms, gluten is fair game and you can eat   
   as much of it as you like.   
      
   Full-blown celiac disease, which is an extreme form of immune-mediated gluten   
   sensitivity primarily affecting the small intestine, affects an estimated 1.8   
   percent of people in Western cultures. But non-celiac gluten sensitivity may   
   actually affect as    
   much as 30 to 40 percent of all people, and according to Dr. Alessio Fasano at   
   Massachusetts General Hospital, virtually all of us are affected to some   
   degree.   
      
   This is because we all create something called zonulin in the intestine in   
   response to gluten. These difficult to digest proteins known as prolamines,   
   found in wheat, barley, and rye, make your gut more permeable, which allows   
   undigested proteins to get    
   into your bloodstream that would otherwise have been excluded. That then   
   sensitizes your immune system and promotes inflammation and autoimmunity.   
      
      
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   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)