What Happens to Your Brain When Blood Sugar is High?

This is Dr. S.Om Goel, MD Medicine and DM from India and also from the U.S. I’m practicing in U.S. these days. I’m trying to, maybe in a more simplified English, trying to give important day-to-day life medical facts to the community. And today I’m talking about the effect of high blood sugar on the brain.

I talked about the effect of high blood sugar on the kidney, the effect of high blood sugar on the heart. And now today I’m talking about the effect of the persistent high blood sugar or diabetes, which is not under good control, the effect on the heart. So it affects, you know, sugar, you know, it does, there’s no question about it.

It causes brain shrinkage, affects the small blood vessels of the nerves, you know, which is damages and causes shrinkage of the brain, which leads to dementia. It really affects, shrinkage affects the hippocampus, which is a memory area for the brain. And so we have a difficulty in remembering things.

So there is an indirect effect to the blood vessels and direct effect on the brain cells also. You know, this is the chronic high blood sugar, chronic inflammation of the nerves and some oxidative stress, as we call it. And so it damages brain cells.

So overall effect to make it very simple and not making it any complicated, we have a difficulty in memory. We have difficulty in cognitive function. And it is very important to control our blood sugar as much in a normal as possible to maintain our brain health.

And, you know, persistent high blood sugar can almost cause 50 percent increase in dementia and our cognitive function. Please remember that it’s not complicated. I mean, you know, you say high blood sugar affecting small blood vessels, a blood supply to the brain or nerves and then directly affecting nerves also causing them damage.

So this is what you need to understand. So we have to protect our brain. It can be done.

It is reasonable if you just maintain a good control, follow constantly with your physician. Thank you so much.