Blood Sugar Undermines Human Memory

The New York Times reports on new research showing how even "moderately elevated" blood glucose reduces the ability to form memories, and -- because blood glucose regulation declines with age -- this may help explain why our brains decline as we age.

Oddly, the only recommendation in the article is this:

Since glucose regulation is improved with physical activity, Dr. Small said, “We have a behavioral recommendation — physical exercise.”

I'm all in favor of exercise, to be sure, but I also immediately thought of diet. Studies have shown that low carbohydrate diets dramatically lowered blood glucose (see here, here, and here). To be sure, there's one small study suggesting that "severe carbohydrate restriction" somewhat impairs memory in the very short term (i.e., one week). It would be interesting (albeit practically impossible at this point) for someone to do a study on how cognition is affected after a few decades of a carbohydrate-restricted diet.

Losing Sleep Isn't a Useful Signal of Worth

In certain fields -- I'm thinking of law, medicine, and politics, but there are surely others -- some people have a sort of bravado about how often they skimp on sleep to put in extra hours at work. I understand why this sort of signaling goes on (people are trying to signal that they are truly dedicated), but it's still not a very good signal, particularly in fields that are cognitively demanding. The times that I've worked past midnight (or past the point of sleepiness), I've noticed a definite dropoff in cognitive functioning -- even in the simple ability to quickly comprehend a paragraph. And it's not just me: There are lots of biological reasons why losing sleep literally makes you dumber, such as less neurogenesis, a less accurate memory, lower attention span, less ability to master complicated tasks, etc.

Moreover, sleep helps prevent coronary artery calcification, while loss of sleep turns on dangerous inflammatory processes and is linked to a wide variety of diseases.

Pulling an "all-nighter" ought to be quite a rare event, for anyone who wants to have a well-functioning brain and body. In fact, if you have an intellectual job or task to perform, a better way to signal both that you know how the human body works and that you're dedicated to performing at your peak intellectual abilities would be announcing that you took a nap.