Today, more than 30 million people in the U.S. have diabetes, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and many more have something called insulin resistance, a condition in which the body becomes less sensitive to the hormone insulin. Often, those with insulin resistance don’t know they have it, because doctors do not ordinarily order tests for it. But if insulin resistance is allowed to progress, it can develop into diabetes and other diseases.
Insulin resistance is much more common than diabetes, said Suzanne Craft, director of the Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center at Wake Forest School of Medicine. Craft, quoted in a US News and World Report article said that while insulin resistance is most often associated with diabetes, “ It can also cause a host of other complications … Alzheimer’s disease being one of those.”
A 2018 review article in Frontiers in Neuroscience also notes the connection, observing that the connection between diabetes, obesity, and dementia “represents an important public health challenge but also an opportunity to further understand these conditions.” The authors note that, “The key intersection among the three diseases is insulin resistance.”
“What’s already well established,” concludes US News and World Report, “is that preventing insulin resistance can protect a person’s overall health, including brain health.”
Preventing insulin resistance begins with a good understanding of how blood sugar and insulin function in the body, and how the foods we eat affect insulin resistance.
