Another Study Touts Low-Carb For Diabetics

You've heard the old saying, "when it rains, it pours," right? Well, when it comes to the precipitation coming down in the form of solid research in favor of the low-carb lifestyle, I'd say we have a 100% chance of a gulley washer on our hands people!

This Newswire story refers to a brand new study on the subject of Type 2 diabetes and guess what the researcher is proposing to help combat this terrible and growing disease? Livin' la vida low-carb!

While the conventional thinking towards treating diabetes has been to promote more and more drugs for people with this condition to take, there is a group of scientific researchers who understand the way to treat the root causes of diabetes, namely insulin resistance and uncontrollable blood sugar, is through an effective and healthy diet that will prevent the disease from getting any worse than it already is. The only such diet that does that is livin' la vida low-carb.

Dr. Eric Westman from Duke University Medical Center presented his study findings about how low-carb can help diabetics improve their disease in the past week at the annual meeting of the American Diabetes Association in Washington, DC.

Now Swedish researchers, led by Dr. Jorgen Vesti Nielsen formerly from the Department of Nephrology at the University Hospital in Lund, Sweden, have released the details of their nearly 2-year study of diabetes patients who were put on a low-carb diet and the results have been stable improvements in their blood sugar and a reduction in the amount of diabetes drugs to control their condition. These are the kind of studies that Dr. Mary Vernon said in her interview at my blog the other day that the National Institutes of Health (NIH) should pony up the dough to pay for because they are sorely needed.

Dr. Nielsen put 16 obese diabetics on a diet consisting of 20/30/50 ratio of carbohydrates/protein/fat and he reported all of those patients saw great improvements in their hemoglobin A1C after 22 months on that diet.

This study was published in the June 14, 2006 issue of Nutrition & Metabolism.

Interestingly seven of the patients who had been on a low-fat diet prior to the study and were immediately put on the 20/30/50 diet also saw improvements, including a reduction in bodyweight, improved glycemic control and a reversal of a six-year long decline of renal function for one of the patients (attributed to the improved glycemic control and weight loss).

SUNY Downstate Medical Center Biochemistry professor Dr. Richard Feinman, who is also editor of the journal Nutrition & Metabolism, said although this is a "small study," it is the "longest of its kind."

"It shows people coming off medication and improving their glycemic control,” Dr. Feinman commented on Dr. Nielsen's study.

Dr. Richard Feinman, an incredible researcher who I was privileged to meet earlier this year in Brooklyn, New York, has agreed to be interviewed by me regarding the latest low-carb research and what it means for those of us who support livin' la vida low-carb. I'll post that interview for you as soon as it is finished. Stay tuned.

In the meantime, feel free to send Dr. Jorgen Vesti Nielsen an e-mail regarding his study at jorgen.vesti-nielsen@ltblekinge.se.