When your cells stop responding to insulin, which is required to remove sugar out of your bloodstream, problems occur. Generally, after your sugar levels spike, it forces your pancreas to work overtime in a futile effort to produce more insulin and rid your body of excess sugars.

But the cascade of dangerous health effects that follows such insulin resistance, if left untreated, can result in health problems and death.

But do not be fooled, it is not just the sugar that is undermining your health. Carrying around excess weight and a lack of exercise also contribute to diabetes stranglehold on your well-being. Consequently, that translates into a higher risk of heart disease, blindness, and kidney failure.

And it is not just your physical well-being that is compromised by the excess weight. A study in the journal Diabetologia addresses this problem recently. A team led by University of Utah’s Dr. Sujung Yoon is determining how being overweight affects the brains of diabetics, specifically cognition.

So the study followed 50 overweight diabetics and fifty normal-weight diabetics between the age of 30 and 60. All were diagnosed within the last five years, and all the volunteers had undergone MRI scans alongside memory, planning, and reaction tests previously. The results were startling.

Overweight diabetics experienced more brain deterioration than diabetics of a healthy weight. The researchers also discovered that as a consequence cognitive dementia risks might increase in sufferers of diabetes.

While differences in executive function did measure statistical differences between the overweight and normal weight diabetics, the overweight had a thinner cortex in the temporal and motor regions as well as diminished memory and psychomotor speed.