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@IndianaScott

Hello @dorisena nice to e-meet you here on Mayo Connect.. I am sad to read about the challenges you faced with your husband's dementia. It must have made being his caregiver even more difficult.

I do not know of any documented connection between cancer and dementia, In my wife's case it was brain cancer and the fact the tumor destroyed her brain causing her dementia-like symptoms.

Likewise I have never seen anything linking diabetes with Alzheimer's disease, but I guess anything is possible. It seems to me, as a non-medical professional, that one being in the brain and the other being a failure of the pancreas, they wouldn't intersect.

What have you read and learned about this? I'm interested to know.

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Replies to "Hello @dorisena nice to e-meet you here on Mayo Connect.. I am sad to read about..."

Yes, I have read about the link between diabetes and Alzheimer's. I lived with my husband's mental decline, and I have mild diabetes which I can control with my diet, exercise, and a couple of pills. I can notice the mental decline when I eat the wrong food for me. I can observe the sleepiness in others when they eat too much sugar. My husband would sit down and fall asleep in the middle of a sentence.
Alcoholism added to the problem. There are a number of kinds of mental diseases. Alzheimer's is a word to cover many problems and is difficult to diagnose. It doesn't make much difference what you call it after it happens, and takes years to develop in some cases. We must remember that the brain is connected to all body functions and controls all physical actions, some in site specific places of the brain.
When you have physical damage from a stroke, the brain is damaged somewhere because it controls the physical function. This is much more complicated than you and I can imagine. Dorisena

Hello @dorisena and @IndianaScott

I read with interests your posts about dementia and the idea of diabetes and Alzheimer's link. Since this sounded familiar, I did a little research. Here are a couple of websites which discuss this theory:

https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/type-2-diabetes/in-depth/diabetes-and-alzheimers/art-20046987
and
https://www.webmd.com/alzheimers/guide/alzheimers-diabetes-link

While there is a link, a good diet and exercise seem to be the key to preventing dementia in those with diabetes or a pre-diabetes diagnosis.

@indiana Scott I believe that the drugs for diabetes can cause schizophrenia, so probably dementia also. (