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Tips for Diabetics Suffering from Memory Loss

Diabetes is much more than blood sugar levels. When you think of diabetes mellitus, you may think of diet, insulin, blood glucose levels, and glucometers, but diabetes type 1, type 2, Juvenile diabetes, and gestational diabetes is much more than a sum of its parts. Diabetes mellitus is a very serious disease, and it can be a deadly disease. We should never get complacent about diabetes. Diabetes can cause heart failure, kidney failure, dementia and memory loss. This article will focus on memory loss, and what you can do to help prevent memory loss.

The complications of diabetes can cause hardening of the arteries, which can interfere with blood flow to the brain. You may experience some memory loss when you have diabetes. You might even believe that memory loss is just a normal part of aging, but it really isn’t. If your memory isn’t as sharp as it used to be, there may already be some atherosclerosis (hardening of the arteries) present in your vascular system. A way to improve your memory is to help diminish the plaque building up in the arteries.

How do you help diminish the plaque associated with hardening of the arteries? You can decrease the plaque in your vascular system by making lifestyle changes that are conducive to treating your diabetes mellitus. Keep your diabetic diet in check, get regular exercise that you enjoy doing, take your medicines as ordered, and check your blood glucose levels as often as you are supposed to.

To expand on your eating habits, portion control is just as important as what you eat. You might be tempted to treat yourself from fast food joints and eat a big order of fries and a huge burger topped with cheese and bacon. Not only is a meal like this bad for your diabetes, it is also murder on your blood vessels, because all that fat, when ingested is converted into the fatty compounds that line the inside of the blood vessels. If you think about the lumen (the opening in the center) of the blood vessels, and you think of coating the insides with fatty deposits, the lumen will get smaller and smaller until the blood has difficulty flowing through the vessels. As the vessels get smaller, blood cannot flow into them and you begin to get memory loss, as well as some cognitive loss. You may find that you have more difficulty in making decisions.

Exercise is an important activity, which you should have fun doing. You are likely to engage in healthy exercise if you like doing it. You might like to get outside and walk. Walking outside can be so much more fun than walking on a treadmill. You get to feel the air as it touches your skin. You can hear the sounds of life outside. Walking outside the house can be very refreshing. Listening to the sounds of life can help to keep your mind active while you are enjoying your walk. Exercise is part of the recipe that helps prevent plaque from forming on the blood vessels, so you should try to get 30 minutes of good exercise per day. If you don’t have time for 30 minutes all at one time, you may exercise 10 minutes 3 times per day, or you can exercise for 15 minutes 2 times per day. Your body doesn’t care which way you do it, as long as you do it. As a response to exercise, your blood glucose levels will come to normal or near normal. By keeping your blood sugar levels in check by living a healthy lifestyle, you are likely to prevent many of the adverse conditions associated with diabetes, such as memory loss.

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