Diabetes? Why a Low-Carb Diet is Your Best Option. Once again, there’s great news supporting a low-carb diet’s role in the fight against diabetes. A group of 26 physicians and nutrition researchers, in a review paper submitted to the journal Nutrition, listed 12 reasons, backed by clinical studies, why a low-carb diet is beneficial for managing Type-2 diabetes. They include: • High blood sugar is the most important feature of diabetes control. Decreasing carbohydrate intake has the greatest effect on blood sugar levels. • Increase in calorie intake and obesity has been driven by increases in carbohydrate intake. • Carbohydrate restriction provides benefits regardless of weight loss. • Carb restriction is the most reliable dietary intervention for weight loss. • Adherence to low-carb diets in Type-2 diabetes is as strong as other dietary interventions, and is often significantly stronger. • Generally, replacing carbs with protein is beneficial. • Increased total fat and saturated fat intake are not associated with increased heart disease risk. • Carbohydrates—not dietary fats—control triglyceride levels. • HbA1c—also known as glycated hemoglobin, and an indicator of blood sugar levels—is the greatest predictor of microvascular and macrovascular complications in patients with Type-2 diabetes. • Lowering carb intake is the most effective method for decreasing triglyceride levels and raising levels of “good” HDL cholesterol. • Patients with diabetes reduce their dependence on, or doses of, medication when following a low-carb diet. • Intensive blood glucose reduction though carb restriction has negligible side effects compared with the use of medication for the same effect. Diabetes is a disease involving the inability to process carbohydrates, therefore reducing carbohydrates would seem to be an obvious treatment, leading to the authors’ conclusion that the current recommendations of using a low-fat diet to control or manage diabetes need to be reevaluated—and more and more research shows that low-fat diets are failing to improve obesity, heart disease risk or even general health. Do you see the pattern here? More and more research continues to validate the fact that a low-carb diet is quite effective (and sustainable) when it comes to managing diabetes and a variety of other disease risk factors.
Posted on: Fri, 01 Aug 2014 22:40:01 +0000
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