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How Eating ‘Good’ Carbs Can Help Prevent Dementia

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One of the biggest concerns of people who get older is developing brain conditions like dementia. Although many people are led to believe that there's no cure for this disease, there's actually something you can do to reduce your risk of developing this disease as you make certain lifestyle changes and that includes your diet.

According to Professor Preston Estep, author of The Mindspan Diet, what you should be doing is increasing the amount of refined carbohydrates in your diet, as this is what's going to help keep your brain healthy. The only thing you need to know though is how to identify the "good carbs" from the "bad carbs". What sets these two apart is the length of time between when they are eaten and the time that they reach the peak level in your bloodstream. How is this measured? GI or glycemic index is being used, and it refers to how the carbs are ranked according to how they affect the blood glucose levels.

Carbs with low GI value cause a slow rise in blood glucose but when you eat food with moderate amounts of GI can cause a spike of glucose in the bloodstream and that means a spike in the release of insulin. This event enables your body cells to absorb more glucose and that makes you crave for more sugar. When this regularly happens, you are going to be at risk of developing diabetes, specifically type 2 diabetes.

This is where dementia comes in because dementia has been associated with diabetes. Similar to diabetes, when a person has dementia, it means that glucose is not used properly in a person's brain.

So what kind of carbs is safe to eat? Choose low GI rice and pasta, and these are the long grain rice, basmati white rice, long grain white rice and wheat pasta.

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