Controlled Blood Sugar Levels to Enhance Clear Thinking Ability among Overweight Type 2 Diabetic Individuals, Study Suggests

Nov, 2020 - By SMI

According to a new study led by the researchers of Pennington Biomedical Research Center have reported that regulation of blood sugar levels aids in enhancing clear thinking ability and learning and remembering among overweight people with type 2 diabetes.

Owen Carmichael from Biomedical Imaging at Pennington Biomedical Research Center stated, “It's important to properly control your blood sugar to avoid the bad brain effects of your diabetes. Don't think you can simply let yourself get all the way to the obese range, lose some of the weight, and everything in the brain is fine. The brain might have already turned a corner that it can't turn back from.”

In the study, researchers evaluated around 1,100 participants in the Look AHEAD (Action for Health in Diabetes) study. In the study, one group of participants attended three sessions each year that focused on, physical activity, diet, and social support. Moreover, another group were instructed to alter their diet and physical activity according to a program designed which aided them to loose over 7% of their body weight within in a year and maintained that weight loss. Later, these participants were provided with cognitive tests including tests of thinking, learning, and remembering after 8 to 13 years after the initiation of the study. Later researchers observed that participants with controlled blood sugar levels had better cognitive test scores, however weight loss and more exercise did not always increase cognitive test scores.

Researchers also noted that more weight loss was either better or worse reliant on the mental skill involved such as individuals who lost more weight enhanced their executive function skills including planning, short-term memory, attention, impulse control, and the ability to switch between tasks. However, these individuals deteriorated in verbal learning and overall memory.