Sugars cause dementia

is this the nut who's always on pbs?

 

A bit too late for me... the cows have left the barn already! :-P

 

according to dr. fuhrman, it's never too late to send him a few bucks.

 

This is one of those articles that is rather unbalanced. Sugar is not a toxic or risky substance as this article implies. A healthy body can properly maintain blood glucose levels properly over quite a range of sugar intake. The brain is protected. When that regulation fails, the whole organism is at risk of damage, including the brain. They enemy is lack of exercise and sustained bad diets, not sugar. Those will definitely shorten and or lower the quality of life.

 

Aah.

 

i have to admit, humor is one of my favorite pastimes, life is too short. but you're right, i don't know the science, i just know what i like.

as far as the article goes, it's totally related to diabetics, who don't process sugars normally.

 

no argument. i guess the question is, how much is too much? should i lay off these herseys kisses?

 

I decided to followup on some of these claims. So I took the study referenced by footnote 7 and read it. It was quite different than what I expected. For example, take this excerpt from that study showing the improvements noted by a rise in glucose levels:

"Intriguingly, the in vitro activity of hypocretin cells reveals strong inhibition after the administration of physiological levels of glucose (Burdakov et al., 2005, 2006). Over the past few decades, there have been a number of studies suggesting a role for glucose in the modulation of cognitive processes. The beneficial effects of glucose have been observed for a wide range of experimental settings and cognitive tasks across different medical populations and species. In humans, an enhancement effect following glucose administration has been shown for: cognitive performance resulting in a reduction of reaction times (Adan and Serra-Grabulosa, 2010); selective and sustained attention and control (Gagnon et al., 2010; Serra-Grabulosa et al., 2010); continuous performance tests of attention (Flint, 2004); cognitively demanding tasks (Scholey et al., 2001); and learning and memory (for an extensive review see Smith et al., 2011). In clinical populations with severe cognitive deficits, the administration of glucose has been shown to improve cognitive function, for example, memory performance in Alzheimer's disease (Manning et al., 1993; Messier et al., 1997), although there are also negative reports (Craft et al., 1999). Furthermore, in schizophrenia, higher blood glucose levels have been shown to improve verbal memory and declarative learning (Newcomer et al., 1999; Stone and Seidman, 2008)."

It seems that Dr. Fuhrman is using some extremely selective editing between the studies referenced and the warnings issued. It turns out he keeps referring to studies concerning abnormal high glucose levels, not normal glucose levels.

There is a bit of bait and switch here. There is no question that abnormal glucose levels are bad. But this is being parleyed into a statement that sugar is bad.

 

I agree with that. The high fructose corn syrup is really not something most folks consume in moderation. It is consumed by a great many in huge volume. I remember reading the overwhelming tonnage coming in and out of grocery stores was soda. If someone knows the number, please comment.

 

IIRC, the only organ in the body that needs sugar :the brain.

DBCassidy

 

i don't drink soda, what else is it in?

 

okay, water and coffee could be a problem. but doesn't hef drink a case of pepsi a day?