Junk Food Could also Give You Dementia: Study

Obesity-inducing junk food could also give you dementia through high blood pressure and cholesterol, which interrupt blood supply to the brain, says a study.

Junk food may not just make you fat but also give you dementia through high blood pressure and cholesterol, states recent study.

Some animal studies have specifically implicated insulin, a hormone, suggesting that Alzheimer's could be 'diabetes of the brain'. But the latest theory also points to high levels of fatty and sugary food damaging the brain by interrupting its supply of insulin.

Junk Food Laws Help Combat Childhood Obesity
A law in the US focuses to curb junk food from school canteens to control childhood obesity. These efforts taken by the government have been praised by experts.

In type 2 diabetes, junk food prompts our cells in becoming resistant to the insulin they need to convert sugar into energy.

Insulin is required to regulate brain chemicals, key to memory and learning, to make and strengthen connections between brain cells and to maintain the blood vessels that supply the brain with blood and oxygen, the journal New Scientist reports.

The study suggests that something similar may be happening in Alzheimer's, with a bad diet preventing brain cells from responding properly to insulin.

Diseases Related to Old Age
Ageing is referred to the accumulation of changes that brings a person closer to death.

Rats developed Alzheimer's after being fed a compound that prevented their brains from using insulin, according to the Daily Mail.

Suzanne de la Monte, study co-author from Brown University, US, said: "They were demented. They couldn't learn or remember." When researchers fed healthy men and women fatty and sugary foods for a month, levels of insulin and beta amyloid rose.

Fast Foods
Fast foods contain as much as 500 calories per serve which is even higher than the calories that a lunch or dinner should provide. Majority of Indians have a flawed perception of healthy food options.

With rates of diabetes soaring, dementia could be reaching 'epidemic' proportions.

The Alzheimer's Society's director of research, professor Clive Ballard said: "One in three people over 65 will develop dementia. Research like this points us in new directions for treatment development."

Schools can Help Lower the Trend of Child Obesity by Eliminating Junk Foods
New policies that eliminate sugary beverages and junk foods from schools may help slow childhood obesity, according to a San Francisco State University

Source-IANS