5 symptoms of Alzheimer’s due to high sugar
Alzheimer’s is a disorder in which a person’s ability to think, behave reasonably, and remember things gets compromised. It is categorized as a relatively rare type of dementia. Although Alzheimer’s is an age-driven condition, what people eat also influences their chances of developing it. Sugar-heavy meals eventually lead to hyperglycemia and can accelerate Alzheimer’s in individuals when they grow old. Here are some common links between Alzheimer’s and high blood sugar:
Memory loss
Alzheimer’s affects the brain’s information retention zones. Therefore, people with this disease find it challenging to recollect anything, even the incidents that happened a few days before. Poor memory is accompanied by poor judgment, meaning these individuals constantly make bad decisions that make life difficult for themselves and those close to them. For instance, it is not uncommon for someone with Alzheimer’s to falsely blame someone else for a theft or mistake they may have made.
This is a point at which Alzheimer’s and high blood sugar intersect. Consuming too much sugar leads to cognitive decline. Besides, sugar kills brain cells, so having too much of it in one’s bloodstream causes memory and attention problems.
In short, sugar consumption tends to worsen Alzheimer’s symptoms with time. Many symptoms of type 3 diabetes, such as memory loss, lack of initiative, and difficulty completing familiar tasks, are identical to those of Alzheimer’s.
Increased anxiety
An individual who has Alzheimer’s tends to stay anxious about anything and everything around them constantly. This worsens if their blood sugar is also high, as it is a significant contributor to anxiety and depression in its consumers. Added sugars cause a person’s blood sugar levels to rise and crash dramatically, causing massive fluctuations in their energy levels. So, when blood sugar crashes, a person’s anxiety grows, and their mood turns increasingly grim and pessimistic.
Greater irritability
Anxiety and progressively rising irritability go hand in hand with Alzheimer’s and high blood sugar. People with this condition, especially in its advanced stages, have low temper regulation capabilities. Such individuals may lose their cool at the slightest of things, such as others not addressing them by name or their food not containing adequate salt or spiciness. Poor blood sugar regulation is critical in worsening anxiety, worry, and irritability in individuals.
Longer time to complete simple tasks
As implied earlier, someone with Alzheimer’s seriously struggles to perform any tasks with full focus and conviction. This results in such people being unable to complete any task. Unfortunately, elevated blood glucose aggravates this condition by actively destroying the cells and blood vessels in a person’s brain and eyes (high blood sugar also causes diabetic retinopathy). For people with diabetes, this causes issues like motor speed lags and adversely affects cognitive function.
All these factors are critical in linking diabetes with Alzheimer’s in hyperglycemia individuals.
Loss of orientation/sense of direction and location
As it affects a person’s ability to think and comprehend the environment around them, high blood sugar can also trigger some other Alzheimer’s symptoms, such as an inability to know and understand what location a person is in and where they need to be. This problem worsens progressively for people living with diabetes.