Recent reports indicate that dementia cases will increase dramatically over the next thirty years, and that some steps need to be taken to prevent this from happening.
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Dementia is a devastating condition that impairs memory and threatens the victims’ freedom. There is growing evidence that certain foods and beverages can cause this effect, so avoiding them can help prevent cognitive impairment or improve symptoms.
Researchers have warned that sugar-sweetened drinks are particularly harmful to the brain, leading to 11 years of aging when consumed more than twice a day.
Refined sugar has a bad reputation for being associated with obesity and heart disease. This is because it raises blood pressure and causes chronic inflammation, both of which can precede dementia.
Studies on neurological health also highlight the potential damage that sugar can cause to the brain.
Added sugar refers to calories containing calories made from carbohydrates. Sugar-sweetened drinks are a prime example of this, providing the arrival of calories that can quickly quench hunger.
This can have devastating effects on the brain, causing the prefrontal cortex to contract over time.
There is also evidence that sugary drinks can accelerate brain aging.
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Some studies have proven these claims, and a group of 4,200 people underwent cognitive and memory tests, including a study by the Boston University School of Medicine that sugary drinks reduce brain size and lead to poor memory.
Participants were asked to provide information on sugar beverage intake, which the group used to determine harm.
Researchers have found that drinking one or two sugary drinks a day is associated with 1.6 years of brain aging.
The results were even more pronounced when estimating age based on memory.
The results found that drinking one or two sugary drinks or more than two sugary drinks a day was associated with brain aging at 5.8 and 11 years, respectively.
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Compared with those who did not drink sugar-sweetened drinks, participants had worse memory and lower brain levels.
Sudha Seshadri, a professor of neurology at the Boston University School of Medicine, said: “There does not seem to be much improvement in eating sugary drinks, and replacing sugar with artificial sweeteners will not help.
Matthew Pace, co-author of the study, explained that sugary drinks are used as a way to study overall sugar consumption.
“It is difficult to measure the total amount of sugar in the diet, so we used sugary drinks as an alternative,” he noted.
Source: Express
