A new study has shown that the first line of defense for diabetics should not be drugs, but rather diet modification. Specifically, a vegan diet has been found to boost blood sugar control, reduce the need for medication, and decrease the risks for heart disease in people with Type 2 diabetes.
Type 2 is the more common type of diabetes, which is most often found in obese adults. It occurs when the pancreas doesn’t produce sufficient levels of insulin or when the body doesn’t make proper use of the insulin that is produced.
The insulin hormone is instrumental in providing the body with the energy that it needs in order to perform vital functions. If untreated, diabetes can lead to many complications, including heart disease, erectile problems, nerve damage, kidney problems, and blindness.
The American Diabetes Association (ADA) provides many effective guidelines for diabetics, including a diet that could help control this increasingly common disease. However, there’s another way of eating that could be even more effective — a low-fat vegan diet. Vegans are strict vegetarians who avoid meat and do not consume any animal products (for example, eggs and dairy).
In the recent study, which was conducted by the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, 99 male and female subjects with Type 2 diabetes were put on one of two diets and were followed up on for 22 weeks by researchers. The first diet followed the ADA nutritional guidelines that aimed at controlling blood sugar and the second was a low- fat vegan diet, which involved eating fruits, vegetables, and grains, avoiding animal products, and limiting added fats.
The ADA diet consisted of 60 to 70% carbohydrates and monosaturated fats, 15 to 20% protein, under seven percent of saturated fats, and up to 200 mg of cholesterol daily. This plan was further customized based on each individual’s body weight and other factors. The vegan diet broke down like this: 75% carbohydrates, 15% protein, and 10% fat. Portion sizes were not limited. In addition, the people in both groups took 100 mcg of vitamin B12 supplements once every two days.
An important component to the study was that none of the patients involved increased their level of exercise, if they indeed did any type of fitness activity at all. This was to make sure that whatever effects were discovered would be due to diet alone, not exercise.
At the end of the study, 43% of those on the vegan diet versus 26% on the ADA diet had been able to reduce whatever diabetes medication they were taking. Those are some impressive numbers. Furthermore, “glycated hemoglobin” (HbA1C) levels were reduced by 0.96% and 0.56% in the vegans and ADA subjects, respectively.
Diabetics have higher HbA1C (red blood cells that have added glucose molecules, i.e. sugar) levels than the average person. The study participants who did not change medications during the period of the study had HbA1C reductions of 1.23% (vegans) and 0.38% (ADA group).
The diabetics on both diets lost weight — with the vegan group losing a whopping 14.3 lbs on average, versus the ADA group’s 6.82 lbs. Moreover, LDL (bad cholesterol) levels fell 21.2% for the vegans and 10.7% for the ADA dieters. Again, this was almost a 50% difference.
So, if you suffer from Type 2 diabetes, you should look at improving your diet before considering drugs. With a proper, healthy diet and the right lifestyle changes (e.g. exercising, quitting smoking, etc.), you could get your condition under control naturally. Talk to your doctor or nutritionist about incorporating a low-fat vegan diet into your life.
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Tags: Diets, exercise, glucose
