Diabetics' brain function will be quite limited unless their blood sugar has been well-controlled, many researchers conclude.

From this body of scientific evidence, one could reason that high blood sugar and limited action could result from a brain impairment caused by diabetes.

"Cognitive dysfunction in patients with diabetes mellitus was first noted in 1922, when patients with diabetes, who were “free from acidosis but usually not sugar free,” were noted to have impaired memory and attention on cognitive testing compared with controls. Since then, there have been many studies designed to better delineate the scope and magnitude of cognitive dysfunction in diabetes," according to article Cognitive function in diabetes s Mellitus.

In an article published in the Endoctrine Review Journal in 2008 Authors Christopher T. Kodl and Elizabeth R. Seaquist concluded that the effects on the brain's reasoning ability should be listed as a complication of diabetes along with kidney, nerve damage, heart disease and blindness. These authors verified through study and examination of other researchers work. They concluded: ". It found that there were significant reductions in overall cognition, fluid and crystallized intelligence, speed of information processing, psychomotor efficiency, visual and sustained attention, mental flexibility, and visual perception in subjects with type 1 diabetes compared with controls....Deficits in cognitive function have been detected as early as 2 yr after diagnosis in children with type 1 diabetes, and these patients experienced less positive changes than controls over time in general intelligence, vocabulary, block design, speed of processing, and learning (12). Six years after diagnosis, these same subjects had impaired IQ, attention, processing speed, long-term memory, and executive function compared with controls."

Yet when this author spoke to people working in the medical field that the impaired brain must be addressed when treating diabetes, all who this author has discussed this issue with have systematically denied this aspect and state the diabetics will not do anything for themselves. Of course not, they have impaired brain function. Further studies and evaluations by the above authors concluded that type 2 diabetes has even more problems than type one. This author states of course because without adequate insulin the brain slows to a crawl. Yet, doctors and nurses keep coming back to this author with the same lines: Diabetics just won't do anything. Despite mountains of research and evidence provided by this author the doctors keep denying this authors plea. As a type 1 diabetic, as soon as the insulin wears off, he senses a slowing of the brain, blurred vision, slower walking speeds and less joy all controlled by the brain. Nope. The doctors don't believe a word.

What did these authors above have to say about this issue:  "Patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus have also been found to have cognitive impairment (Table 2). Type 2 diabetes has been associated with decreases in psychomotor speed, frontal lobe/executive function, verbal memory, processing speed, complex motor functioning , working memory, immediate recall, delayed recall, verbal fluency, visual retention, and attention. The impact of these subtle neurocognitive deficits on the daily lives of patients with type 2 diabetes is not clear. Sinclair et al.  found that subjects with mini-mental status exam scores less than 23 fared worse on measures of self care and ability to perform activities of daily living. These subjects also displayed an increased need for personal care and increased rates of hospitalization when compared with controls. Patients with diabetes also have been found to have slower walking speed, lack of balance, and increased falls associated with type 2 diabetes, but whether the cerebral affects of diabetes contributed to these abnormalities is debatable. Complicating the impact of mild neurocognitive dysfunction secondary to diabetes on daily living is the observation that patients with diabetes are twice as likely to have depression, which will also negatively affect cognitive function and daily activities. Type 2 patients also have an increased incidence of Alzheimer’s disease and increased incidence of vascular dementia."

"I don't believe a word," many doctors appear to communicate. In fact, most doctors probably see dollars signs we greeting diabetics and say thank you for bringing your wallet. One could further summarize that doctors have no goal in resolving issues with their diabetic patients because the more they come back the more money they can earn. Of course, those who trust doctors more than they trust God, do not want to hear about this either. Many still want to believe a pill will fix everything. However like the citations above, this author observes diabetics taking those pills. He watches as their walking speed declined, their face and hands shrivel, bags appear under their eyes. You see: the pills do nothing to restore the diabetics health or their brain function. The citation above clearly indicated that type 2 diabetics, many of whom, do not use insulin. How did the state of medical treatment gotten so far from the truth. The human body needs insulin for the brain, sex, muscle development, joy, happiness and all the passions of life. Naturally, people would rather believe a lie and take pills than accept the truth if diet and exercise fail, then insulin is the only logical approach.

These authors above concluded that the more high blood sugar a patent has the worse the brain functions, and they found the same true in type 1 and type 2 diabetics. In diabetic rats, the decreased neurotransmitters serotonin, dopamine activity, and increased norepinephrine have been observed. However what did these researchers conclude when insulin had been provided to those diabetic rats?

"Interestingly, these changes were all reversed with insulin. One proposed hypothesis is that the alternating high and low glucose levels seen in patients with poorly controlled diabetes may worsen neurotransmitter function," they concluded. They further noted the type 2 diabetes expressed similar characteristics ash Alzheimer's patients and those patients provided insulin had positive response from the therapy. From their review and studies, these authors concluded, in opposition to what doctors tell this author, cognitive dysfunction should be listed as one of the complications of diabetes.

After a reviewing many articles through news and scientific journals, this author has substantiated that in fact adequate insulin 24-7 improves both learning and mood. As a diabetic researcher, this author has known for years that insulin improves the sense of joy, happiness, brain function, sexual abilities and energy levels.

According to Diabetes Australia-NSW, mood and learning did improve when children were provided an insulin pump for the simple reason these youngster received a steady supply of insulin. Of course, this is not rocket science and such an approach mimics the body's natural response. And of course, the insulin pumps normally use a short acting insulin, and your body's own production is short acting.

In the February 2009 article Insulin pump therapy improve mood and behavior in children with type 1 diabetes, they noted in an Australian study by the Murdoch Children's Reseach Institute in Melbourne in a study involving 32 children.

"Before starting on the pumps, the children, aged six to 16 years who lived in Melbourne and Sydney, underwent a range of tests to assess mood and behavior, and measure cognitive function such as intelligence, attention and information processing," the author indicated. "The results published in the February issue of Diabetologia, show the children experienced a significant reduction in HbA1c levels, reduced high blood glucose levels and less variation in blood glucose levels.
They had significant improvements in areas relating to memory, reasoning, attention and the ability to process information."

The Journal of Clinical Investigation cleared indicated that the movement of glucose in and out of the brain is highly important for brain function. IN the March 1981 issue, author M.M Hertz and associates researched this very issue and published the article Insulin increases glucose transfer across the blood-brain barrier in man. These authors sought to determine the unidirectional transport of glucose in and out of the brain before during and after the administration of insulin.

“During insulin infusion, unidirectional flux of glucose (in and out of the brain) increased significantly.”

This assessment is important as both this author experiences slowing of the brain function as soon as the insulin wears off, his mood declines quickly and his walking speed slows. While this article is not conclusive, the researchers present evidence that insulin plays a vital role in brain function.

In an article published by the Dana Foundation, the author Elizabeth Norton Lasley contributed more evidence about the brain dysfunction in the article, Diabetes and the brain, the unseen connection. Lasley specializes in writing about neuroscience.

"When citing the dangers of type II diabetes, doctors usually focus on associated, life-threatening conditions such as heart disease and risk of stroke. Research is beginning to show, how-ever, that diabetes can damage the brain directly—filling in the details of a picture in which insulin resistance, memory loss, and even Alzheimer’s disease are ominously intertwined," Lasley wrote. "The role of insulin, a hormone produced in the pancreas, is to signal cells to open their membranes and let glucose in.... In the brain, imbalances in glucose can affect mental acuity even in people who are not diabetic. Carol Green-wood and Gordon Winocur at the Bay-crest Centre for Geriatric Care, Toronto, asked healthy adults to perform memory tasks, such as remembering paragraphs and lists of words, after a glucose drink. Those with greater-than-normal fluctuations in blood sugar did worse on the tests. The brain uses large amounts of glucose, especially for memory. If insulin’s signal is unheeded, the brain may not get the fuel it needs. But insulin plays other roles as well, which come together to explain both memory loss and Alzheimer’s disease.

Insulin is involved in long-term potentiation, a process of memory formation at the cell level; it also regulates several of the chemical messengers involved in memory, such as acetylcholine. At low doses, insulin helps to contain inflammation and, at high doses, stimulates it."

This author has long known about the connection between brain activity, sense of joy, sexual function and the administration of insulin. While he has heard doctors tell him that the brain function had nothing to do with inaction by diabetics, the evidence appears clear that the diabetic does in fact have limited brain function. Just how severe likely depends on how much insulin the diabetic makes or if the diabetic makes none at all. Other authors have noted that the brain, a very small organ consumes abut 450 calories per day. They also noted that too low of blood sugar caused by injecting too much insulin over time will cause the brain to increase the glucose transporter receptors. However, high blood sugar does not do the reverse by decreasing insulin receptors, adding evidence to the fact that high glucose in the blood stream damages the brain.

"While brain cells don't rely on insulin to get energy, the brain still has to deal with high and low levels of glucose in the blood-stream. Very low levels can put diabetics on the edge of a brain shut-down. This can cause what Simpson describes as "diabetic accidents": passing out behind the wheel of a car, for example. And high levels of glucose in the blood make diabetics susceptible to all sorts of physical and neurological problems, like memory loss and stroke.," wrote Dana Bauer in the article Feeding the Diabetic Brain.

Scientists describe a blood brain barrier that protects the brain from toxins in the brain. Their research noted some surprising finings in how glucose, which fuels the brain must be allwed to enter through glucose transports in the blood brain barrier. The research determined that changes take place with low blood sugars when diabetics receive too much insulin.

"Turns out the blood-brain barrier, over time, was able to sense the deficiency in blood glucose in these otherwise healthy rats. In response, the endothelial cells began to create more glucose transporters: 25 percent more. Half of those new transporters were assigned to the luminal side of the membrane to help transport as much glucose as possible from the blood.," Bauer wrote. "This change in the number of transporters, Simpson stresses, happened only in the (lining of the blood vessels) endothelial cells. He and Vannucci looked at other cells inside the brain - at neurons and astrocytes, a type of glial cell - and saw no increase. "That was a little bit of a surprise to us," says Simpson. It meant the blood-brain barrier alone was responsible for regulating the amount of sugar going to cells inside the brain."

In the article Muscarinic Potentiation of GABA_A Receptor Currents Is Gated by Insulin Signaling in the Prefrontal Cortex published in the Journal of Neuroscience on February 2003 the author Xiao-Hong  Ma and associates explained that neurotransmission and insulin signaling in cognitive areas, such as the prefrontal cortex (PFC), play a key role in regulating learning and memory and has a possible affect on Alzheimer's Disease.

Freud had it right in regards to the prefrontal cortex plays a role in behavioral issues. As the above citation indicates insulin signaling is important for the prefrontal cortex. Diabetics with out of control blood sugars have a partial shut down of that brain region, possibly.

Dr. Joseph W. Slap wrote an article On the incompatibility of the psychoanalytical structural model with human neuroanatomy. His statements provide a important clue why diabetics with constantly elevated blood sugars exhibit irrational and increased anger.

Slap stated: "Damasio (1984) has found that damage to the prefrontal cortices, specifically the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, causes impairment in decision-making, goal-oriented thinking and social behavior. Damage to the prefrontal cortex changes personality and makes us unlike who we are. As the most specific, neocortical site for information processed in limbic circuits, the prefrontal cortex is the crucial locus of interplay between intellect and feelings.