Can diabetes affect your brain?

In the same way that diabetes can cause nerve damage to your eyes, feet, and hands, it can also affect your brain by damaging nerves and blood vessels. This can lead to problems with memory and learning, mood shifts, weight gain, hormonal changes, and over time, other serious problems like Alzheimer's disease.

What damage does diabetes do to the brain?

“With diabetes, you have an increased risk of damage to blood vessels over time, including damage to the small blood vessels in the brain. This damage affects the brain's white matter,” says Joseph C. Masdeu, MD, PhD, of the Houston Methodist Neurological Institute.

Can diabetes cause mental confusion?

When diabetes is poorly controlled, it can lead to delirium. This acute state of severe confusion and behavior change is difficult to treat and is associated with higher risk for long-term cognitive impairment and even death.

Can diabetes mess with your mind?

Patients with diabetes have been found to have several changes in brain structure that appear to develop over time (top) and often experience conditions that present risk for subsequent cognitive dysfunction (bottom).

Does diabetes affect your memory?

How Does Diabetes Affect Memory Loss? Uncontrolled diabetes may increase the risk of experiencing cognitive problems, such as memory loss. Higher than normal blood glucose levels can damage nerve cells, supportive glial cells, and blood vessels in both peripheral nerves of the body and the brain.

How Diabetes Can Affect Your Brain

Can diabetes make your head feel weird?

So if your blood sugar is out of whack due to diabetes, you may develop brain fog. Brain fog describes cognitive impairments like: decreased concentration. mood swings.

Do diabetics get angry easily?

Among diabetic, higher blood glucose, or hyperglycemia, has historically been associated with anger or sadness, while blood sugar dips, or hypoglycemia, has been associated with nervousness. Persons with diabetes are not the only ones vulnerable to mood disturbances as a result of blood sugar fluctuations.

Which mental illness is definitely associated with diabetes?

Some of the psychiatric disorders of particular relevance with regard to diabetes include delirium, substance use disorders, depression, anxiety, psychotic illness like schizophrenia, eating disorders. The subsequent section presents an overview of these psychiatric conditions in the context of diabetes.

Does sugar cause permanent brain damage?

Throughout the body, excess sugar is harmful. Even a single instance of elevated glucose in the bloodstream can be harmful to the brain, resulting in slowed cognitive function and deficits in memory and attention. The good news, however, is this inflammatory damage from sugar may not be permanent.

Can untreated diabetes affect your brain?

Diabetes can have an impact on your whole body. Your brain is no exception. Recent studies have linked type 2 diabetes to a slowdown in mental functioning and an increased risk of Alzheimer's disease. The chance of brain complications is just one more reason to keep your diabetes under control.

Why do diabetics get so angry?

What's sometimes called "diabetic rage" can be dangerous, because it may involve behaviors you're not consciously aware of. When your blood sugar fluctuates, spikes, or drops, it can produce feelings of anger, anxiety, or depression. You may feel like your emotions are out of your control.

Can diabetes cause psychotic episodes?

In diabetes, hyperglycemia (high blood sugar) and hypoglycemia (low blood sugar) are the two conditions that can cause psychosis.

What brain fog feels like?

Brain fog is characterized by confusion, forgetfulness, and a lack of focus and mental clarity. This can be caused by overworking, lack of sleep, stress, and spending too much time on the computer.

Can sugar cause neurological problems?

High blood sugar can lead to nerve damage called diabetic neuropathy. You can prevent it or slow its progress by keeping your blood sugar as close to your target range as possible and maintaining a healthy lifestyle.

Does sugar destroy brain cells?

With too much sugar, your memory can start fading, and your thinking speed can actually start slowing down as more and more sugar becomes present in your bloodstream around your brain, which has been shown to be toxic to the brain cells present there. It can even kill your brain cells.

What are the symptoms of too much sugar?

Does diabetes cause dementia?

Several research studies following large groups over many years suggest that adults with Type 2 diabetes have a higher risk of developing Alzheimer's. diabetes. According to the one study's results, Type 1 diabetics were 93% more likely to develop dementia.

Is anxiety a symptom of diabetes?

Research has consistently uncovered a strong connection between diabetes and anxiety. One study found that Americans with diabetes are 20 percent more likely to be diagnosed with anxiety than those without diabetes.

Does diabetes cause schizophrenia?

Malfunctions in how the body processes sugar that occur in diabetes and obesity could also explain mood and other mental disorders such as schizophrenia, researchers now reveal.

Why do diabetics get headaches?

A headache can indicate that blood sugar levels are too high, which doctors call hyperglycemia. Alternatively, blood sugar levels may be too low, which doctors call hypoglycemia. The higher the fluctuations in blood glucose levels, the more likely it is that a person with diabetes will experience headaches.

Is diabetes a disability?

Specifically, federal laws, such as the Americans with Disabilities Act and the Rehabilitation Act, protect qualified individuals with a disability. Since 2009, amendments and regulations for these laws make clear that diabetes is a disability since it substantially limits the function of the endocrine system.

What are 10 warning signs of diabetes?

What do diabetic headaches feel like?

The headache that comes with a mild or severe low blood sugar can feel like your skull is cracking apart — it's brutal. And often times, the headache will linger long after you've treated the hypoglycemia and your blood sugar is back up to a safe range.

Can diabetic neuropathy affect the brain?

But a team of researchers from Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust and Sheffield University, England, have discovered that the condition can cause serious damage to areas of the brain called grey matter – a major component of the central nervous system involved in touch and pain sensory perception.

Why does my brain feel weird?

Brain fog can be a symptom of a nutrient deficiency, sleep disorder, bacterial overgrowth from overconsumption of sugar, depression, or even a thyroid condition. Other common brain fog causes include eating too much and too often, inactivity, not getting enough sleep, chronic stress, and a poor diet.