The study involved 141 people with an average age of 63 who did not have diabetes or pre-diabetes, which is also called impaired glucose tolerance. People who were overweight, drank more than three-and-a-half servings of alcohol per day, and those who had memory and thinking impairment were not included in the study.<\/p>\n The participants’ memory skills were tested, along with their blood glucose<\/a>, or sugar, levels. Participants also had brain scans to measure the size of the hippocampus area of the brain, which plays an important role in memory.<\/p>\n People with lower blood sugar levels were more likely to have better scores on the memory tests. On a test where participants needed to recall a list of 15 words 30 minutes after hearing them, recalling fewer words was associated with higher blood sugar levels. For example, an increase of about 7 mmol\/mol of a long-term marker of glucose control called HbA1c went along with recalling 2 fewer words. People with higher blood sugar levels also had smaller volumes in the hippocampus<\/strong>.<\/p>\n “These results suggest that even for people within the normal range of blood sugar, lowering their blood sugar levels could be a promising strategy for preventing memory problems and cognitive decline as they age<\/strong>,” said study author Agnes Fl\u00f6el, MD, of Charit\u00e9 University Medicine in Berlin, Germany. “Strategies such as lowering calorie intake and increasing physical activity should be tested.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n The study was supported by the German Research Foundation, the Else Kr\u00f6ner-Fresenius Foundation and the German Ministry of Education and Research.<\/p>\n To learn more about brain health, please visit www.aan.com\/patients.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" From the American Academy of Neurology media release: Even for people who don’t have diabetes or high blood sugar, those with higher blood sugar levels are more likely to have… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[10,4,336],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15806"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15806"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15806\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15814,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15806\/revisions\/15814"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15806"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15806"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15806"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"blood_glucose\"](\"http:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/02\/blood_glucose.jpg\")
<\/a>Even for people who don’t have diabetes or high blood sugar, those with higher blood sugar levels are more likely to have memory problems<\/strong>, according to a new study published in the October 23, 2013, online issue of Neurology\u00ae<\/em>, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.<\/p>\n