Mediterranean diet may also help stop diabetes Posted on May 30th
vegetables — already known to protect against heart disease —
also appears to help ward off diabetes, Spanish researchers
said on Friday.
The study published in the British Medical Journal showed
that people who stuck closely to the diet were 83 percent less
likely to develop type 2 diabetes than those who did not.
“The new thing is that we have been able to assess
adherence to a Med diet and the incidence of diabetes in people
who were initially healthy,” said Miguel Martinez-Gonzalez, an
epidemiologist at the University of Navarra in Spain, who led
the study. “We didn’t expect such a high reduction.”
The World Health Organisation estimates more than 180
million people worldwide have diabetes — a number likely to
more than double by 2030 as more nations adopt a Western
lifestyle.
Type 2 diabetes accounts for 90 percent of all cases and is
closely linked to obesity and heart disease. The condition
accounts for an estimated 6 percent of all global deaths.
For their study the Spanish researchers recruited 13,000
former students at the university with an average age of 38 who
had no history of diabetes. They tracked their dietary habits
and health over an average four years.
The volunteers also initially completed a food frequency
questionnaire to measure the kinds of food they ate. The list
included questions on the use of fats and oils, cooking methods
and dietary supplements.
People who strictly adhered to a Mediterranean diet full of
vegetables, fish and healthy fats such as olive oil, and low in
red meat, dairy products and alcohol had lower odds of
diabetes.
Only about 40 people in the study developed diabetes but
Martinez-Gonzalez added in a telephone interview that further
study is needed to confirm the diet’s protective effects.
But the fact that the protection appeared to extend to
older people, smokers and volunteers with a family history of
diabetes — a group all the more prone to the disease — shows
the diet works, Martinez-Gonzalez said in a telephone
interview.
“These higher risk participants with better adherence to
the diet, however, had a lower risk of diabetes, suggesting
that the diet might have a substantial potential for
prevention,” the researchers wrote.
(Reporting by Michael Kahn, Editing by Mary Gabriel)