MONDAY, Aug. 31, 2009 (Health.com) — Studies already suggest that the Mediterranean diet—rich in fish, fruits, nuts, and olive oil—can prevent second heart attacks, delay Alzheimer’s disease, and maybe even lower your cancer risk.
Now, new research says the Mediterranean diet may also be a winning solution for people with type 2 diabetes. Compared to people on a low-fat diet, those with type 2 diabetes who ate a Mediterranean diet lost more weight and went longer without blood-sugar-lowering medication, according to a study published this week in Annals of Internal Medicine.
Type 2 diabetes, the most common form of the disease, affects more than 20 million people in the U.S. Researchers estimate that one in three children born this century will get diabetes at some point in their lives.
“A Mediterranean diet isn’t a magic diet, but it has a lot of features that we know are generally healthful,” says Richard Hellman, MD, an endocrinologist and clinical professor of medicine at the University of Missouri–Kansas City School of Medicine, who was not involved in the research.
In the new study, 215 overweight people—newly diagnosed with type 2 diabetes—were randomly assigned to either a low-fat diet or a low-carbohydrate Mediterranean diet.
After four years, the researchers from Second University of Naples, in Italy, found that only 44% of the people who stuck to a Mediterranean diet needed blood-sugar-lowering medication, compared to 70% of people who followed the low-fat diet. Unlike people with type 1 diabetes, who need insulin injections to survive, those with type 2 can sometimes keep blood-sugar levels in the safe range with diet and exercise alone.
However, if those methods stop working, they may need a pill or insulin injections to manage blood sugar.
“The people on the Mediterranean diet had better blood-sugar control because of the diet, and the trigger for diabetic drugs is when blood sugar is higher than you want it to be,” explains Christine Laine, MD, MPH, the editor of the journal.
Next page: Mediterranean diet led to more weight loss
Comments (0)