Why too much sugar early in life, even in the womb, could increase your dementia risk later

This is the 97th instalment in a series on dementia, including the research into its causes and treatment, advice for carers and stories of hope.

The seeds of dementia may be sown long before our first birthday – or even before we are born. New research shows that while risks such as high blood pressure and cholesterol compound over decades, early sugar exposure can harm the brain before we take our first breath.

“We were interested in whether nutrition during the first 1,000 days of life could influence brain health decades later,” says Dr Jiazhen Zheng, who was part of the research team at HKUST that examined medical records of almost 65,000 people from the UK Biobank.

They compared data from people conceived and raised during World War II sugar rationing against those born immediately after the restrictions were lifted, when average sugar intake doubled. “The end of UK sugar rationing provided a rare natural experiment,” Zheng says.