Can't remember if this was on HN previously or I saw it somewhere else ... but a few weeks back there was a research PR article about some researchers feeding mice a high sugar/far diet and letting them solve a swimming task, and found that the high sugar/fat diet mice performed worse, and attributed this to memory / cognitive degradation, a la Alzheimers.
They therefore concluded that Alzheimers is effectively "diabetes of the brain" (i.e. with or without concomitant diabetes 'of the body'.)
So this news is interesting, since it both supports the "diabetes of the brain" interpretation, as well as debunking it at the same time (i.e. it's not the high-sugar, but the lack of ketones which you only get when you avoid sugar?).
I wonder if this subtle distinction has any practical importance. E.g., perhaps you don't need to avoid sweets more generally as a diabetic would have to, as long as you have enough days where you produce ketone bodies (e.g. through intermittent fasting?).
Equally, one has to wonder if the whole lack of ketones bad might be a mechanism for diabetes itself ... (maybe this is an actual hypothesis being researched? I haven't done the research to have an educated answer to this).
They therefore concluded that Alzheimers is effectively "diabetes of the brain" (i.e. with or without concomitant diabetes 'of the body'.)
So this news is interesting, since it both supports the "diabetes of the brain" interpretation, as well as debunking it at the same time (i.e. it's not the high-sugar, but the lack of ketones which you only get when you avoid sugar?).
I wonder if this subtle distinction has any practical importance. E.g., perhaps you don't need to avoid sweets more generally as a diabetic would have to, as long as you have enough days where you produce ketone bodies (e.g. through intermittent fasting?).
Equally, one has to wonder if the whole lack of ketones bad might be a mechanism for diabetes itself ... (maybe this is an actual hypothesis being researched? I haven't done the research to have an educated answer to this).