can high blood sugars affect your brain

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cakie

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i've noticed my friend who always has high levels is becoming increasingly forgetful and well their brain not really working.
 
are we talking about a girl?..........is she blonde?

No seriously ive heard of low blood sugar levels affecting our thinking, not so sure about high levels!:confused:
 
Hi ..

Got to agree with Sacredheart here ... whether Nathan is High or Low .. both affect his concentration etc

Heidi
xx:D
 
her bloods often just read hi then she will rage bolus and go low thats when she bothers testing she refuses to carb count or see doc etc she was on the low side last night and her sis who isn't diabetic told her to eat something before she took her basal so went low at 5 am as she refused. Now she's back to being in the late teens early twenties
 
Sugar levels definately affect my sons concentration levels and his co-operative nature

If he is high or low then u can usually tell because he can b quite stubborn and struggles to concentrate on things....
 
Agree 100% with sacred, if im high i am ditzier then ever, i get things the wrong way around in here when i type or if im saying things out loud
 
High can affect concentration as much as being Low can, like when my daughter was crossing the road & just stopped in the middle and started to laugh, I had to pick her up & test her thinking she was low & she was high & she wonders why I wont let her cross the road to the park:confused:
 
Just saw this and thought of you and your thread x Its from www.childrenwithdiabetes.org.uk

Can diabetes affect cognitive ability and academic performance?

Fluctuating blood glucose levels can have a significant impact. High BGs lead to tiredness and poor concentration. Hypos directly affect the brain?s capacity for higher reasoning (the inability to communicate clearly being one of the signs of a hypo), and a child will be unable to think and concentrate both during the hypo and for some time afterwards.
 
I think that both can affect you -though if high it may depend whether the cause is insufficient insulin or too much food (if you see what I mean). I find that my ability to do mental arithmetic suffers when my levels are high and I find my brain freezing.
 
The only reason i ask is because she cant remember anything what so ever. On Saturday she had to go back to the cashpoint to check her balance 5 times as she had forgotten what it was.

She has never had any control over her diabetes and her blood glucose meter always reads high so she rage bolases which obviously takes her way to low.

She is also very angry a lot of the time, could this also be caused by the extreme blood sugar levels?

would such rapid fluctuation cause a long term affect on her brain?
 
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Oh yeah, it surely can. A couple of weeks back I went really high and my bro found me standing in the middle of the sitting room a complete blank. He couldn't get me to react for a few minutes. I have no recollection of this, or the visit to the hospital that followed it.

On a good day, I routinely forget to take my pills, or I did until my OH set reminders on my phone for me. Why didn't I think of that? I used to pride myself on my phenomenal memory, but now information slips away like sand through the holes in a colander. I struggle for words I should know well, the simplest ones some times. I scares me that my braincells seem to be leaking out through my ears. The sooner I get this thrice damned disease under control the better, I'm assured things should improve when I do.
 
Both lows and highs affect brain functions. The brain is dependent upon glucose and like the rest of the body works best when levels are within a certain range.
Heres part of the conclusion from a study into hyperglycaemia and cognitive performance

this field study assessing both type 1 and type 2 diabetic subjects’ cognitive-motor functioning during daily routines found significant cognitive dysfunction during hyperglycemia among some subjects. Inspection of the figures suggests that this is not a linear relationship but that there may be a threshold around 15 mmol/l, when cognitive-motor function begins to be affected.
Click to expand...

There were 3 different tests analysed, all included some sort of mental subtraction. Both speed and accuracy were affected by levels above 15mmol but not in everyone. Only 55% of subjects were affected and only 25% experienced both slowing and loss of accuracy. They found a slight relationship in that the people whose performance was affected at high levels also tended to be those people whose levels were often at levels above 15mmol.
The authors suggest that for optimal cognitive performance glucose levels should be between 4 and 15mmol.

http://care.diabetesjournals.org/content/28/1/71.full
 
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ty helen thats made it more clear.

but im still concerned as she is just always so angry? could it be linked to the extremes she puts her body through?

it sometimes seems like its frustration that causes it, but she will never admit she has a problem.
 
Hi cakie - it could be the frustration of trying to control the blood sugars and feeling that they are fighting back that is causing the anger.

People often get angry that diabetes has happened to them - and try to go into denial. Sometimes they accept it and their significant others are in denial. Some clinics offer counselling so that all the mixed feelings can be expressed and some sense made out of them.
 
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