New Method Of Diabetes Treatment

New Method Of Diabetes Treatment.
Low blood sugar in older adults with prototype 2 diabetes may advance their risk of dementia, a new study suggests June 2013. While it's distinguished for diabetics to control blood sugar levels, that check "shouldn't be so aggressive that you get hypoglycemia," said study author Dr Kristine Yaffe, a professor of psychiatry, neurology and epidemiology at the University of California, San Francisco. The meditate on of nearly 800 people, published online June 10 in JAMA Internal Medicine, found that proletariat with episodes of significant hypoglycemia - decrepit blood sugar - had twice the chance of developing dementia.

Conversely, "if you had dementia you were also at a greater endanger of getting hypoglycemic, compared with people with diabetes who didn't have dementia". People with sort 2 diabetes, by far the most common form of the disease, either don't commission or don't properly use the hormone insulin. Without insulin, which the body needs to convert food into fuel, blood sugar rises to unsafely high levels. Over time, this leads to urgent health problems, which is why diabetes treatment focuses on lowering blood sugar.

But sometimes blood sugar drops to abnormally sad levels, which is known as hypoglycemia. Exactly why hypoglycemia may enhancement the risk for dementia isn't known. Hypoglycemia may reduce the brain's supply of sugar to a projection that causes some brain damage. That's the most likely explanation".

Moreover, someone with diabetes who has thinking and retention problems is at particularly high risk of developing hypoglycemia possibly because they can't manage their medications well or dialect mayhap because the brain isn't able to monitor sugar levels. Whether preventing diabetes in the commencement place reduces the risk for dementia isn't clear, although it's a "very hot area" of research.

But the findings do suggest that patients' cerebral status needs to be considered in the management of diabetes. Other experts agreed. "This does institute concern about low blood sugar causing time to come problems with dementia and dementia causing problems with low blood sugar," said Dr Stuart Weinerman, an endocrinologist at North Shore-LIJ in Great Neck, NY.

Weinerman isn't convinced that the bonding between hypoglycemia and dementia is cause-and-effect, however. "This is not a reliable study. It raises questions, but it doesn't suit them". But hypoglycemia is a serious problem for diabetics. "Sooner or later, and Harry is going to have some hypoglycemia."

Episodes of hypoglycemia increase with age, perhaps because of changes in kidney operate and drug metabolism, according to an accompanying journal commentary. Anyone taking drugs that lower blood sugar should be informed of the signs of hypoglycemia, and be prepared to deal with it. Symptoms can include confusion, jitteriness, fainting, guts palpitations and blurred vision.

For the study, Yaffe's team collected details on 783 diabetic patients who were aged 70 to 79 and free of dementia at the start of the office in 1997. Over 12 years of follow-up on average, participants were periodically given tests of conceptual ability. The researchers found people who were hospitalized for severe hypoglycemia had twice the risk of developing dementia compared with those who didn't have bouts of hypoglycemia.

And patients with dementia were also more than twice as no doubt to have demanding hypoglycemia, they found. Based on the findings, Dr Marc Gordon, chief of neurology at Zucker Hillside Hospital in Glen Oaks, NY, said he thinks frustrating to control blood sugar too aggressively might be ill-advised. "There has been a be connected about the association between diabetes and dementia men. Patients for to be careful that they are not either undertreated or over treated and that they monitor their blood sugar".