Living successfully with diabetes is no small feat. Along with the insulin shots or pills, there’s also the huge responsibility of maintaining better personal care and a healthier lifestyle. Diabetics also often suffer high blood pressure and heart problems as a result of their disease. And it certainly doesn’t help that a large percentage of people suffering from Type 2 diabetes are also overweight.
All these contributing factors make it extremely important that diabetics follow a proper diet. Figuring out just what the right diet is for diabetics is quite another matter. A new study has found that with all the available dieting options out there, a high-carb diet may not be the best choice. Researchers from Dallas, Texas found that when diabetics consumed mainly carbohydrate products in their diet over a long period of time, their blood pressure shot up.
However, diabetics fed a diet high in a specific monounsaturated fat (oleic acid) had the best results as far as fat, cholesterol, and blood pressure levels were concerned. Oleic acid is found in foods such as vegetable oils, margarine, nuts, and nut oils and spreads.
The study involved 42 patients with diabetes split into two randomly selected groups. Both groups received very different diets. The first group went on a carbohydrate- based diet with 55% of their intake being from carbohydrates and 10% from monounsaturated fat (out of a total of 30% fat). The second group had a high-fat diet with a total intake of 45% fat (25% of which was monounsaturated fat) and a mere 40% represented carbohydrates.
The diets lasted six weeks, but half of the patients spent another eight weeks on each of the diets. While blood pressure was very similar between both diet groups at six weeks, at the end of the total 14 weeks, the carbohydrate group had noticeably higher blood pressure than the monounsaturated fat group did.
This means that maintaining a high-carb diet for a long period of time may not be the best option for diabetics. Speak to your doctor about what nutritional plan is best for your health if you suffer from diabetes.
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Tags: Cholesterol, Diets, foods for diabetics
