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Dementia Risks

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Glucose Levels and Risk of Dementia
Introduction
Dementia is a severe decrease in mental ability that dramatically reduces the ability of the brain to carry out its normal functions. It impairs the overall behavior, memory, and thinking of an afflicted individual. Alzheimer’s is a very well-known type of dementia that affects a large amount of people of older age. Dementia can cause memory loss, loss of coordination, speech impediments and loss of focus. Dementia can be caused a number of factors such as result for head injury, disease and changes in chemical level balance in the brain. One of those chemicals that can be found in the brain is glucose. “Glucose is the main fuel for metabolic processes the brain. A constant supply of glucose …show more content…
Every 2 years the participants would be tested for dementia using the Cognitive Abilities Screening Instrument, where scores lower than an 85 had to undergo further clinical and psychometric tests. If the participant was diagnosed with dementia the date would be recorded as the halfway point between the study visit and when the diagnosis was given. Given the fact that the participants were scheduled to be tested every 2 years it gave the researchers a standard window of testing in addition to time for them to have a significant measurement in glucose levels in each …show more content…
Many people may not have realized that there is an association between glucose and the chemical makeup of the brain. This type of article could help to bring more attention to the subject. This would be especially important because of the increasing prevalence of diabetes, which is a disease that can cause elevated glucose levels.
I also liked that the experimenters took outside variables into consideration and other risk factors were determined when conducting tests. “Risk factors with the potential to confound the relation between glucose levels and dementia were defined with the use of the ACT study and Group health data sources” ( , 542). Test participants were given a questionnaire which asked about their overall health such as exercise level, smoking habits and previous notification of heart disease. These test questions then helped the experimenters place the participants into groups based on their responses. This procedure helped to reduce any extraneous variables that could have had an effect on the experiment outcome. The experimenters also provided a lot of data that gave statistics based on factors such as age, average glucose levels of healthy individuals and the incidence of dementia among participants with and without diabetes. This helps the

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