Posted Monday, 1 February
Dementia link to aggressive blood sugar control
A recent study followed over 16,000 people with type 2 diabetes to see what happened to those who'd had hypoglycaemias badly enough to need hospital treatment.
They found that one or more severe episodes of hypoglycaemia were associated with a significantly increased risk of developing dementia.
Now it's possible that the reduced memory and thinking ability made these people bad at looking after themselves, but it looked as though the hypos preceded the dementia.
It's also possible the problem relates to the severity of the diabetes causing little strokes but the researchers didn't think so.
This reinforces the recommendations in Australia, which are that if you have type 2 diabetes what you need is exercise, weight loss, cholesterol and blood pressure treatment and reasonable, but not perfect sugar control.
