Results of a study published in Diabetes Care, a journal from the ADA, shows that a higher A1c can affect your brain function. The MIND (Memory in Diabetes) study is a substudy of the ongoing ACCORD trial.Almost 3,000 participants volunteered for the study. All the participants had type 2 diabetes. The average age of the group was 62.5 years, with an average A1c of 8.3%. The results showed that the higher the A1c, the lower the score on the cognitive tests.
Another good reason to keep blood sugar levels in a normal range and keep the A1c at or below the recommended number.More from your diabetes guide...
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Or . . . smarter people (i.e., with higher scores on cognitive tests) had lower A1c scores. Remember, correlation does not equal causation.
The only way to establish causation would be to test cognition to establish baseline, then raise or lower A1c scores experimentally, and retest. Of course, such a study would probably be unethical – and it would be difficult to find volunteers.
Or maybe smarter people were better able to control their levels and diet compared to others in the study.