Re: Insulin protects brain

dtms69@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
On Feb 3, 6:15 am, Taka <taka0...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Insulin protects brain from Alzheimer's - US study

Insulin appears to shield the brain from toxic proteins associated
with Alzheimer's disease, U.S. researchers said on Monday, supporting
a theory that Alzheimer's may be a third form of diabetes.

And they said GlaxoSmithKline's (GSK.L) diabetes drug Avandia, or
rosiglitazone, which increases sensitivity to insulin, appeared to
enhance this protective effect.

"Our results demonstrate that bolstering insulin signaling can protect
neurons from harm," William Klein of Northwestern University, whose
study appears in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,
said in a statement.

Klein said the findings support a new idea that Alzheimer's is a type
of diabetes of the brain.

"In Type 1 diabetes, your pancreas isn't making insulin. In Type 2
diabetes, your tissues are insensitive to insulin because of problems
in the insulin receptor. Type 3 is where that insulin receptor problem
is localized in the brain," Klein said in a telephone interview.

In some people, this can occur with age, he said.

"As you get older, some individuals start to have less effective
insulin signaling, including in the brain," he said, making the brain
more vulnerable to toxins that cause Alzheimer's disease.

Large sticky plaques of amyloid beta protein are a hallmark of
Alzheimer's, which causes memory loss, confusion, the inability to
care for oneself and eventually death.

Recent studies by Klein and others have suggested that short strands
of the protein, known as amyloid beta-derived diffusible ligands or
ADDLs, attack memory-forming brain cells, causing memory loss.

Klein and colleagues treated rat nerve cells with insulin. "It blocked
all of the effects of ADDLs," Klein said.

The effect was amplified when they added the drug rosiglitazone, which
increases insulin sensitivity.

Several studies have found that diabetics have a higher risk of
getting Alzheimer's than the general population.

Last July, researchers at Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York
reported that diabetics who take insulin plus a diabetes pill have a
lower risk of developing Alzheimer's than diabetics who only take
insulin.

That study included a range of anti-diabetic medications, including an
older pill known as a sulfonylurea.

Klein said the findings suggest that measures to protect people from
diabetes -- including a healthy diet and exercise -- are also
important for avoiding Alzheimer's disease.

In a separate study of more than 6,500 people, U.S. researchers found
that having more education does little to slow progression of
Alzheimer's disease once people show signs of becoming forgetful.

"While education is associated with the memory's ability to function
at a higher level, we found no link between higher education and how
fast the memory loses that ability," said Robert Wilson of Rush
University Medical Center in Chicago, whose study appears in the
journal Neurology.

Alzheimer's affects 5.2 million people in the United States and 26
million globally, according to the Alzheimer's Association. (Editing
by Maggie Fox and Vicki Allen)

SOURCE:http://uk.reuters.com/article/governmentFilingsNews/idUKN025310082009...

-------------------------------

So should we keep the sugar in the diet? Insulin spikes good for
brain ...

Taka

I don't know if you were serious about keeping sugar in the diet. It
seems the problem is insulin resistance. You can become less insulin
resistant by good diet and exercise without flooding your body with
insulin.

Dolores

My meager knowledge tells me there is nothing wrong with sugar in the diet, PROVIDED you DONT load it into an empty stomach.

You could load up your stomach with low GI foods and then wolf down the sugary things without upsetting the blood sugar level too much.

As usual, corrections invited :-)
.

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