Preventive Neurology

It is obvious, yet it is not. We need to ban sugar! Rod Long on Unsplash When I was on a road tour of the Southern USA in 2012 with my family, we went to the ‘Golden Corral’ all-you-can-eat buffet one morning for breakfast. The Golden Corral, like so many other fast-food and convenience-food outlets, was a church or cathedral to sugar. A place where you go to worship on the altar of sugar one of the most addictive substances known to man. I was horrified at how many obese Americans were eating at the Golden Corral, the types of food they were eating and the quantity they were eating.  Buffet Bar at the Golden Corral The rapid change in our diets driven by the cheap supply of processed carbohydrates has resulted in metabolic chaos, which is causing the obesity crisis and the cascade of health problems stemming from the resulting hyperinsulinaemia. The following international study confirms that the intake of foods with a high glycemic index is associated with increased cardiovascul...

From Kevin Boyd Is it not interesting that obesity, and its associated comorbidities, are associated with a higher lifetime prevalence of all-cause dementia? However, is it obesity that is a causal factor or the fact that obesity is strongly associated with (1) reduced exercise and a sedentary lifestyle, (2) hypertension and metabolic syndrome (insulin resistance), (3) systemic inflammatory syndrome, (4) mental health problems (depression/anxiety) and (5) sleep apnoea and other sleep disorders? All five of these factors may be the causal factor and not necessarily obesity itself. The modern epidemic of obesity is been driven largely by a change in our diets in particularly the ubiquitous consumption of processed and ultra-processed foods and the large increase in sugar (sucrose) consumption. Prior to the Victorian era, sugar was not a dietary staple and we tended to eat large quantities of unprocessed foods. Eating unprocessed foods meant we had to work hard at chewing food, which crea...