A new Canadian study finds that a Mediterranean Food that includes “low glycemic foods” like beans, nuts, peas, lentils and pasta is better than a high cereal, high fiber diet (brown foods like whole grain breads and cereal, brown rice and potatoes with the skin on) for lowering blood sugar.
These results support earlier work and were released along with a second study on cancer survival rates of type 2 diabetics.
Both studies were published in the December 17th issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.
For the study, researchers at St. Michael’s Hospital and the University of Toronto randomly assigned more than 200 subjects with type 2 diabetes to follow either a high cereal, high fiber diet or a low glycemic index diet for six months. All subjects were taking blood sugar lowering medications during the study.
A low glycemic index diet causes carbohydrates to be digested in the small intestine and converted to blood sugar at a slower rate than higher glycemic foods.
This keeps blood sugar more stable. This study points out the value of low glycemic foods, especially if you want to keep the well known health risks of type 2 diabetes at bay.
In fact, at the end of the study, blood sugar levels decreased by 0.5% for subjects on the low glycemic index diet, compared with a decrease of only 0.18% in the other diet group.
What’s more, those in the low glycemic group also saw their high density lipoprotein (HDL or “good” cholesterol) increase by 1.7 mg/dL, compared to a decrease of .2 mg/L in the high cereal, high fiber diet group.
The numbers might be small, but the Canadian team thinks they could result in a 10 to 12% reduction in cardiovascular difficulties overall.
Diabetes now affects about 20 million people in the U.S. alone, around 7% of the population.
Beyond the changes to your health and lifestyle, diabetes increases the risk of heart disease, cancer and other problems. And while there are many medications available to control blood sugar levels, no one seems convinced how effective they are in reducing the other health related problems.
“These findings fit with the general tenor of what’s gone before. The trouble is that those studies tended to be considerably smaller and for shorter periods of time, and they didn’t always show the effects significantly,” said study author Dr. David J.A. Jenkins, research chair in nutrition and metabolism at the University of Toronto and St. Michael’s Hospital in Canada. “I think this certainly supports a recommendation to people that this is an extra tool in the tool kit.”
The other study appearing with the Canadian research in the Journal of the American Medical Association was completed by a team from Johns Hopkins University, involving data from 23 earlier studies.
The researchers conducted a systematic review and meta analysis that compared overall survival rates of those with and without type 2 diabetes at cancer diagnosis.
The team found that those with diabetes were 41% more likely to die of cancer than those who didn’t have diabetes when diagnosed.
Specific cancers that were noted in the review include endometrial cancer (a 76% higher death risk), breast cancer (a 61% higher death risk) and colorectal cancer (a 32% higher death risk).
