TRIBUNJOGJA.COM – High blood pressure or Hypertension and Diabetes Type 2 is closely related and has a negative effect on the overall health of the body.
Hypertension can cause many complications Diabetes, including diabetic eye disease and kidney disease, or even make it worse.
On the other hand, most people with diabetes will eventually experience high blood pressure, along with heart problems and other circulation problems.
But apparently not only that, and hypertension Diabetes Type 2 can also affect the mind in subtle ways, and its effects begin to show in middle age.
“We found that hypertension and Diabetes in particular, it can have a detrimental effect on thinking speed and memory, “said the study’s first author, Oxford University neurologist Michele Veldsman.
“When blood pressure increases, the speed of thinking and memory becomes worse.” Other diseases or lifestyle and genetic factors that affect blood supply to the brain are known as cerebrovascular risk factors.
According to Michele, previously known such risk factors can increase the chances of a parent getting dementia.
However, new research has looked at younger groups, and used more subtle measurements to determine how the brain is affected in terms of memory and thought speed.
The research team analyzed MRI brain scans of more than 22,000 UK Biobank participants, looking for changes in the brain’s gray matter and white matter pathways, and recorded volunteers’ clinical, demographic and cognitive data. “The brain is made up of networks that connect different regions and work together to coordinate your thinking – these regions communicate via white matter pathways,” explains Veldsman.
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“We found that the volume of the brain in the frontoparietal tissue, and the integrity of the white matter connections between regions are affected by risk factors that affect your brain’s blood supply.”
The team matched the MRI data with cognitive and clinical data, and found that in participants aged 44 to 70 years, higher blood pressure was associated with lower cognitive performance.
Interestingly, older adults (over 70 years) did not show the same effect.
Although only 5 percent of those enrolled in the study had a diagnosis of Type 2 Diabetes, that status also predicts lower executive function.
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The researchers stressed that the memory loss effect was very small, a slight decrease in thought and memory speed, but not unlike the real memory loss experienced in dementia.
Even so, the fact that we can detect this decline means that the participants’ brains have changed, and that it could lead to worse outcomes as they got older.
“The changes are slow, and it is likely not something you will realize in everyday life,” Veldsman said as reported. ScienceAlert (9/11/2020).
“But most importantly, we can detect them and they are associated with minor damage to the brain that has already occurred in middle age. Therefore, it is important to prevent this damage as soon as possible to prevent further decline.”
Of course, with nearly half of all US adults having high blood pressure, and about 1 in 10 having type 2 diabetes, that’s much easier said than done. But as one of the researchers, Oxford University neurologist Masud Husain noted, every millimeter of pressure in your arteries is very important.
“Monitoring and treating even slightly elevated blood pressure can make a difference to brain structure and thinking speed in middle age, while also offering the potential to reduce the risk of developing dementia later in life,” he said.
This article has been published on Kompas.com with the title “Hypertension and Diabetes Are Proven To Change The Structure Of The Brain
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