If you keep away from processed meats, fries, cakes or pastries, your mind will be unharmed until your body fails you. Recent research studies have indicated that the link between processed foods and sugar and the development of Alzheimer’s could be much closer than we thought.

When you eat too much sugar (blood sugar not only from sugar, but also from carbohydrates of all kinds)the cells which receive blood sugars become resistant and easily digested carbohydrates flood the bloodstream with sugar. Insulin is of paramount importance in keeping the blood vessels that supply the brain healthy, and also encourages the brain’s neurons to absorb glucose. Low insulin levels in the brain mean reduced brain function and this is proven in rats which show all signs of Alzheimer’s when insulin is blocked in brain.

Diabetes causes complications too numerous to mention, but they include heart disease, which remains our No. 1 killer. And when the cells in your brain become insulin-resistant, you start to lose memory and become disoriented. You even might even have an altered personality.

We also already know that people with diabetes are at least twice as likely to get Alzheimer’s, and that obesity alone increases the risk of impaired brain function.

What’s new is the thought that while diabetes doesn’t “cause” Alzheimer’s, they have the same root: an over consumption of those “foods” that mess with insulin’s many roles. (Genetics have an effect on susceptibility, as they appear to with all environmental diseases.) “Sugar is clearly implicated,” says Dr. de la Monte, “but there could be other factors as well, including nitrates in food.”