People suffering from type 2 diabetes may keep their disease under control if they follow a diet mainly based on beans, peas, nuts, pasta, rice boiled briefly and low-glycemic index breads, in other words a low-glycemic diet, researchers from the University of Toronto reported in the latest Journal of the American Medical Association.

 

For the study, they followed 210 patients with type 2 diabetes who were asked to follow either a low-glycemic diet or a high-cereal fiber diet for six months. Besides following one of the diets, the participants were asked to have three servings of fruits and five servings of vegetables per day, except fruits considered highly-glycemic such as bananas, pineapple and mangos. Also they were treated with drugs to control their blood sugar.

 

At the end of the study, the researchers found a change in A1C in the blood, which reflects glucose levels over the long term. A1C fell 0.50 percent on the low-GI diet compared with only 0.18 percent on the high-fiber diet, the researchers concluded.

 

Also, levels of HDL or “good” cholesterol rose with the low-glycemic diet but they fell with the high-fiber diet.

 

Therefore, the researchers concluded that “low-glycemic index diets may be useful as part of the strategy to improve glycemic control in patients with type 2 diabetes taking (glucose-lowering) medications.”

More than 23 million people in the United States suffer from type 2 diabetes or diabetes mellitus, a chronic metabolic disease in which the quantity of sugar in the blood is higher than normal. These people are exposed to heart attacks and strokes as well as kidney failure due to diabetes. They need to take antidiabetic drugs for the rest of their lives but the drugs won’t help if they don’t make serious changes in their lifestyle such as having a healthy diet and vigorous physical activity.