Diabetes? Put diet and lifestyle before drugs

Diet and lifestyle changes more effective than drugs

Nutritionists have of course been going on about this for years. But recently they got support from The Lancet. “Because Type 2 diabetes is largely rooted in reversible social and lifestyle factors, a medical approach alone is unlikely to be a solution,” it concluded. “To lessen the burden of diabetes requires a substantial change in diet and routine… The fact that Type 2 diabetes, a largely preventable disorder, has reached epidemic proportions is a public health humiliation.”

Around the same time, the British Medical Journal (July issue) reported a randomised controlled trial of over 90 patients which found that getting patients onto a diet that they enjoyed – Mediterranean or high protein – produced results that were as good if not better than those with medication. They were already quite ill – overweight or with hypertension – and had blood sugar levels that weren’t well controlled despite being on “optimised” drug treatment. The authors concluded: “The extent of the improvement in glycemic control should encourage patients to modify their eating habits.”

And a study last year has found that cinnamon, a natural insulin sensitiser, is almost as effective at lowering a key marker for poor blood sugar control (HbA1C – or glycosolated haemoglobin) as some of the new breed of drugs such as sitagliptin – yet costs considerably less In this randomized controlled trial, 109 participants with poorly-controlled Type 2 diabetes were either allocated their usual care, or usual care plus 1g of cinnamon daily. At the end of 3 months, those receiving the cinnamon recorded a drop in HbA1C levels of 0.83% compared to 0.37% for those receiving just their usual care.

This study gives diabetes care providers and diabetic patients an easily accessible, likely safe, and cheap alternative to help treat type 2 diabetes,” concluded the study’s author Dr Paul Crawford. Further research directly comparing cinnamon with HbA1C-lowering drugs would be useful to see.

The Low down on Insulin
Having too much insulin actually promotes weight gain because its job is to store excess sugar in the blood as fat. The antidote is a healthy clean diet. The higher your insulin the more effective a low-GL diet is. By following a low-GL diet your blood sugar level is naturally more even, so your body doesn’t have to produce so much insulin.

There’s another problem with making, or injecting too much insulin - it increases cholesterol production in the liver, it constricts blood vessels making your blood pressure go up and stimulates the release of dangerous fats called triglycerides. So it’s bad news for heart disease.

The lifestyle eating plan
Instead of trying to cheat the system by stimulating more insulin release, the solution for both weight gain, diabetes and heart disease, is to eat a low-GL diet that means you need to make less insulin to keep your blood sugar level stable, and to naturally improve your sensitivity to insulin so you need less insulin to get the job done  Hundreds of studies now prove that a low-GL diet helps to improve blood sugar balance, and makes you less insulin-resistant, and hence reduces the need for medication. These are well summarised in a review article in the Journal of the American Medical Association for those who want the science.

Exercise Plays a Key Role
Exercise is also a vital piece of the prevention equation. A review of fourteen good quality trials found that, while exercise alone didn’t decrease weight, it did lower glycosylated haemoglobin by the kind of amount one might expect from a drug.(10) As your energy goes up on my low-GL diet you’ll find that so too does your desire to exercise.

Low Fat Diets?

According to diabetes expert Professor Charles Clark, author of the Diabetes Revolution (Vermillion) “There is a simple cure for the obesity and diabetes epidemic but everyone is looking in the wrong place. We blame overeating or fat consumption, but the real villain in both diabetes and obesity is the large amount of refined carbohydrates we eat. It’s this that pushes up our blood sugar levels and leads to diabetes. Meanwhile our bodies store the extra blood sugar as fat and so we put on weight.”

Another study of 85,059 women found that low carbohydrate diets are better than low-fat diets in preventing diabetes. The women who ate less carbohydrate and got most of their fat and protein from vegetable sources were at less risk of developing diabetes. (15)

A 2008 study in the New England Journal of Medicine put volunteers onto one of three diets: a conventional low-calorie, low-fat diet; a Mediterranean diet, restricted for calories and high in fibre and monounsaturated fats; and a high-protein, high-fat, low-carb diet, similar to the Atkins diet, but emphasising vegetarian sources of protein rather than meat and dairy products. (16) The low-fat diet was the least effective for weight loss and raised glucose levels. The Mediterranean diet was the most effective for diabetes, significantly lowered glucose levels in diabetics.

A Spoonful of Cinnamon
Cinnamon has been used for many years in traditional herbal medicine for treatment of type-2 diabetes. The active ingredient in cinnamon, MCHP, mimics the action of the hormone insulin, which removes excess sugar from the bloodstream.

Animal studies have found that there is a positive effect on blood sugar levels when treated with cinnamon. There have also been positive findings in human studies. For example, a research group found that when pre-diabetics were given a cinnamon extract called Cinnulin for 12 weeks, there were improvements in blood sugar levels, as well as body fat percentage.(24) Another study gave diabetics 1, 3 or 6 grams of cinnamon per day.(25) One gram is about half a teaspoon. All responded to the cinnamon within weeks, with blood sugar levels 20 per cent lower on average than those of a control group. Not all studies, however, have shown a positive result.

In summary: The three steps to treating Diabetes:

• Follow the Eco Diet

• Exercise daily

• Supplement with Diabecinn

Bear in mind that your need for medication may decrease so it is important to monitor your blood sugar levels and inform your primary care practitioner accordingly. If you have Type-2 diabetes there’s a good chance you’ll end up not needing any medication. If you have Type-1 (insulin-dependent) diabetes the same recommendations apply but you’ll still need insulin, although possibly less of it.