The Dementia Experiment

I've been thinking about the link between nutrition and dementia a lot lately.

Dementia is a very wild phenomenon that seems to occur when the brain is agitated and has had a little too much carbohydrates and or sugar.

This morning started off a little bit nutty, all before I had a cup of coffee!

My mom came upstairs this morning, all wild eyed like she had just seen a ghost. It's the look she gets when she's having "visitors." She was convinced that some guy was chasing the cat around the room all night as he blew air threw his lips. There was another guy who worked on the door knob all night. She was swearing to me that it was real, I even got an "honest to God, I'm not imagining it."

How do I fight the logic of someone who believes so strongly that they had seen someone or something, that they didn't see anything? From my experience, as long as the persons eyes are wild, you have to figure out how to get them to stop obsessing over the vision.

I didn't do very well this morning, I told my mom that she was imagining someone in the house. She didn't believe me and walked away saying something like, "I'm not crazy."

In the meantime, I prepared my mom's oatmeal with raisins as well as a cup of coffee. By the time I went downstairs, my mom was back, the wild eye woman had retreated. This is when I can explain about dementia to my mom and how no one is in the house.

I've been making sure that my mom keeps her carb intake to a minimum. We eat a huge amount of vegetables, different types of vegetables. I like to make them interesting and use them to make all of our meals beautiful... like a rainbow. Last night we had a salad with sliced roasted chicken on top. It was a fabulous meal... no carbs and very low in fat. This had all the ingredients for a happy sleep for my mom.

So, what made her have visions?

Yesterday, she got upset with me at Walgreens because I bought a new blood glucose meter for 10 bucks. She had 300 test strips for this particular meter (the doctor made a mistake and sent in a prescription for the wrong blood tester.) My mom had run out of the strips that went with her old meter. She didn't have any refills left on the strips and the pharmacist had to fax the doctor. The pharmacist wouldn't give her any strips unless she paid for them. My mom wasn't listening, she was stuck on a belief that she was right.

Well, I knew I needed to buy the darn meter for 10 bucks so that she could test her blood glucose levels. Otherwise we'd be waiting until today and there was no way that she could wait. Checking her sugar levels is how I know what to feed her!

Yesterday, my mom ate right. I think she did anyway. I'm not sure if she bought some of those sugar free candies for a dollar in the store when I wasn't looking, even one little hard candy causes her to be demented and see people and things.

Ok, back to the experiment...

I'm discovering that nutrition plays a huge role in keeping dementia and diabetes under full control. I found a website, Nutrition Data where you can check the glycemic index of any food! It even gives you a place, once you register to add in your own food labels which it will generate the approximate Glycemic Index.

Here's an example of a Taco Bell taco... Taco Bell taco . No wonder I don't like Taco Bell! It's estimated Glycemic Index is 19, too much.

My experiment is to see if I keep the GI to 10 or under on all foods, in order to help my mom regain her full good health.