June 2024 Newsletter | Diabetes-Dementia-Dilemma
My mission is to be the first woman in 4 generations to not develop Alzheimer’s Disease (AD). On my journey of discovering ways to mitigate my risk, I pass this information on to you in this Brain-Body-Health (BBH) Newsletter.
Hello BBH Citizen Scientists!
The last two BBH newsletters have been devoted to blood glucose and its effect on the brain. Being Citizen Scientists, we understand the importance of blood glucose and insulin resistance as a measurement of metabolic health and why it is a risk factor for Alzheimer’s Disease (AD). With our Continous Glucose Monitor (CGM) experiment last month, we discovered that blood glucose is dependent on many factors including the glycemic index and glycemic load of food and how we cook it, how ripe it is, what we pair it with, when we eat, how fast we ingest and digest food, how much we eat, and if we exercise after the meal. Lets not leave out the genes that we inherit which influence all of these factors. The takeaway in our deep dive into blood glucose is it’s not just your genes or aging that is contributing to the rise in diabetes and AD, but rather lifestyle, environmental, social, and political forces that are tipping the scales inching us closer to dementia.
According to Dr. Dean Schillinger, a professor of medicine at University of California, San Francisco. “Our entire society is perfectly designed to create Type 2 diabetes. . . We have to disrupt that.”
FOOD IS PERSONAL AND POLITICAL
At BBH we’re looking for what is happening upstream. While downstream diabetes rates are rising what is influencing this rise? We have discussed many things we can do as individuals to reduce our risk. Most importantly carbohydrate intolerance increases with age, resulting in blood glucose and HGB A1C (a 3 month average glucose) rising. We are an aging population with an increasing amount of centenarians at risk for dementia. Many of us are still eating how we ate when we were growing up. If you are still eating: pizza, bread, donuts, cereals, juices, ice cream, soda, ramen like noodles, and candy you are playing Russian roulette with your health and increasing your risk for dementia. These are considered ultra-processed foods (UPF) that are being recognized as major contributors to the epidemic of diabetes, and reduction in brain volume.
My friend says “Dare to be 100” but I say dare to be healthy at 100 without diabetes or dementia! That will take some work!
WE HAVE TO START SOME WHERE BUT WHERE?
First off: It’s not just ‘your' blood glucose or diabetes it is our global problem with social, cultural, and economic underpinnings.
Diabetes and dementia take a toll not only on friends and families but also on communities. We can’t fix the problem with only medical interventions we need to address: access to healthy food, farming, corporations, transportation, the environment, and packaging. On this latter caveat, while traveling we recently discovered a grocery store that had all its organic produced packaged in plastic. Arrrgh!
In 2022, a comprehensive national report to Congress on diabetes, was laid out reframing diabetes as an epidemic problem. It was about time since the last one was done in 1975! Their recommendations range from encouraging water rather than sweetened sodas, relabeling sugar content into consumer-legible teaspoons not grams, (we have yet to convert to the metric system), and rethinking the designs of communities, housing, and transportation networks. For example, we pick driving over walking and end up sitting in our cars or desks much of the time rather than moving as our blood sugar and diabetes risk increases!
"Let's start first with the kids."
- Gladys Gleason (Mom)
Educating children about brain health and the importance of exercise in reducing blood glucose would be a good place to start. My niece’s idea is to bring playground equipment and par-courses back to middle school and high school near the cafeteria so kids can exercise at lunch or breaks. Exercise also reduces ADHD and improves brain volume. Many of us feel impotent because we don’t have the tools to tackle these big social conditions. However, we can make changes in our families, schools, and communities, with ideas like this, that lean us towards better metabolic health. We can also destigmatize diabetes by sharing our glucose markers with one and another.
Housing and urban growth may seem to have little to do with health but could play a role in reducing the spread of diabetes. These are the so-called social determinants of health moving us beyond thinking that health is just a biological disease. Then we can recognize that the conditions in which people are born in, grow-up, work, live, and age play a huge role in influencing who gets diseases and what the outcomes of the diseases are. Poverty should not determine whether you have access to food, housing, or green space, or an educational system that works.
You can see we have some work to do and it begins with us!
"If we cannot do great things, we can small things in a great way."
- Gladys Gleason (Mom)
Lessons in Coaching:
How to reduce your blood sugar: 10 TIPS
Eat a savory breakfast not sweet or skip breakfast and replace with brunch.
Start meals with veggies
Never eat sugar on an empty stomach
After you eat go for a walk
Vinegar before meal lowers blood sugar- have your salad before the meal
Opt for savory snacks, not sweet ones
Read labels for fat, carbohydrate, fiber, sugar, and protein.
Insulin Resistance (IR) causes testosterone to rise-worsening Poly Cystic Ovary Disease. Reducing IR can reduce or stop it.
Close the kitchen! Stop eating and or drinking at 7 pm. This will have the benefit of reducing night time urination and improve sleep.
Move as much as you can during the day. Set the alarm for 20 minutes and get up! Shoot for 10,000 steps/day
I offer coaching sessions to help navigate and improve brain health for you or a loved one. Contact me to schedule a session.
Lessons in Science:
The science behind food that isn’t food, “Ultra Processed People: The Science Behind Food” An Economist Best Book of 2023 and One of Smithsonian's Ten Best Books About Food of 2023 and NYT Bestseller.
“Brain Health Kitchen” by Annie Fenn, MD turned professional chef. A beautiful book with a science-based lens into preparing brain healthy foods.
How to balance your blood sugar from “Glucose Revolution: The Life-Changing Power of Balancing Your Blood Sugar” by Jessie Inchauspe.
Physical activity in kids tied to brain volume, “Physical Activity in Children Tied to Increased Brain Volume” Medscape.
Over 80% of patients with AD have type II diabetes (T2DM) or abnormal serum glucose.
SAVE THE DATE!
I will be a speaker at:
The Dilemma of Dementia: A Community Forum for the Mendocino Coast
We are delighted to announce our next free event on this important topic. Last September we sponsored a training by the Roslyn Carter Caregiver Foundation, designed to educate and support families and professionals to do better in coping with what feels like an epidemic of dementia from all diagnoses. We heard “MORE!” and so we are announcing a full-day event.
Date: Thursday July 18, 2024
Time: 9:00 AM to 4:30 PM
Place: Caspar Community Center
Fee: Donations encouraged
To our optimized health!
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“If you want to go FAST, go alone. If you want to go FAR, go together."
- African proverb
To our optimized health!