` Low-Carb Mediterranean Diet Aids Diabetes Patients in Achieving Remission - Olive Oil Times
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Low-Carb Mediterranean Diet Aids Diabetes Patients in Achieving Remission

By Paolo DeAndreis
Sep. 12, 2024 14:32 UTC
Summary Summary

A sci­en­tific review arti­cle sug­gests that a plant-based low-car­bo­hy­drate diet with olive oil sup­ple­men­ta­tion can be cru­cial in achiev­ing remis­sion of type 2 dia­betes, with a focus on weight loss and diet man­age­ment. The review ana­lyzed 52 stud­ies and found that the low-car­bo­hy­drate Mediterranean diet, with its empha­sis on plant pro­teins and olive oil, has the poten­tial to sus­tain remis­sion and pos­si­bly reverse dia­betes in newly diag­nosed patients, high­light­ing the need for fur­ther high-qual­ity research in this area.

A new sci­en­tific review arti­cle out­lines evi­dence sug­gest­ing that adher­ence to a plant-based low-car­bo­hy­drate diet sup­ple­mented with olive oil can be cru­cial in type 2 dia­betes remis­sion.

Remission occurs when blood glu­cose lev­els in indi­vid­u­als pre­vi­ously diag­nosed with dia­betes remain below the diag­nos­tic thresh­old for an extended period with­out using dia­betes med­ica­tions.

The review, pub­lished in Diabetes & Metabolic Syndrome: Clinical Research and Reviews, focused on two key fac­tors in type 2 dia­betes remis­sion: weight loss and diet man­age­ment.

See Also:Health News

The review ana­lyzed 52 stud­ies from diverse sci­en­tific sources, inves­ti­gat­ing the cor­re­la­tion between dietary intake, weight loss tar­gets, and suc­cess in achiev­ing dia­betes remis­sion.

The authors cited the low qual­ity of many research papers in the field, indi­cat­ing that about 40 per­cent of the exam­ined papers were at low risk of bias.

Using these sources, the authors com­pared the effi­cacy of the low-car­bo­hy­drate Mediterranean diet on dia­betes remis­sion against other rel­e­vant diets, includ­ing the tra­di­tional Mediterranean diet, low-fat diets and the American Diabetic Association diet.

The results indi­cate that remis­sion is more fre­quently achieved with low-calo­rie diets and diets high in plant pro­teins.

Additionally, the review found that for recently diag­nosed patients, the aver­age weight loss needed to achieve remis­sion – six kilo­grams – was lower with a low-car­bo­hy­drate Mediterranean diet com­pared to other diets.

The research also exam­ined remis­sion out­comes in patients who had man­aged dia­betes for extended peri­ods.

In these cases, suc­cess­ful remis­sion was asso­ci­ated with adopt­ing a low-car­bo­hy­drate Mediterranean diet and more sig­nif­i­cant weight loss, aver­ag­ing eight kilo­grams.

The authors’ find­ings sug­gest that a low-car­bo­hy­drate Mediterranean diet has the poten­tial to sus­tain remis­sion and pos­si­bly achieve dia­betes rever­sal in newly diag­nosed patients.

Although the def­i­n­i­tion is still debated within the sci­en­tific com­mu­nity, dia­betes rever­sal is usu­ally defined as a com­plete remis­sion last­ing more than five years from diag­no­sis.

The review authors noted that in pre­vi­ous stud­ies, com­plete remis­sion was some­times achieved with the tra­di­tional Mediterranean diet, often when fol­low­ing the diet was accom­pa­nied by sig­nif­i­cant weight loss.

Interestingly, the Mediterranean diet has been shown to reduce serum lev­els of advanced gly­ca­tion end prod­ucts, which are asso­ci­ated with insulin resis­tance, a crit­i­cal fac­tor in devel­op­ing type 2 dia­betes.

The review cited the Mediterranean diet’s impact on mod­u­lat­ing advanced gly­ca­tion end-prod­uct metab­o­lism as a poten­tial mech­a­nism by which the diet sup­ports newly diag­nosed dia­betes patients in achiev­ing remis­sion.

The tra­di­tional Mediterranean diet typ­i­cally includes 50 per­cent of calo­ries from car­bo­hy­drates, 30 per­cent from fat and 20 per­cent from pro­tein.

The low-car­bo­hy­drate Mediterranean diet mod­i­fies this ratio, reduc­ing car­bo­hy­drate intake to 35 per­cent of total calo­ries and pro­tein to 20 per­cent while increas­ing fat to 45 per­cent.

The diet excludes com­monly used sat­u­rated fats, red meat, ultra-processed foods, and foods high in sug­ars and sim­ple car­bo­hy­drates. As a result, olive oil is con­sid­ered a pri­mary nutri­tion source.

The review find­ings have not come as a sur­prise: olive oil is increas­ingly con­sid­ered an impor­tant fac­tor in mit­i­gat­ing the impacts of dia­betes, with the healthy qual­i­ties of its monoun­sat­u­rated fats and polyphe­nols pro­vid­ing sig­nif­i­cant car­dio­vas­cu­lar pro­tec­tion.

This car­dio­vas­cu­lar pro­tec­tion is espe­cially impor­tant, as car­dio­vas­cu­lar dis­ease is the lead­ing cause of death among peo­ple with dia­betes.

Extra vir­gin olive oil also helps reduce oxi­da­tion and inflam­ma­tion, which ben­e­fits patients’ over­all health.

According to the review’s authors, cur­rent evi­dence sup­ports low-carb, plant-based diets as key to achiev­ing dia­betes remis­sion. However, they empha­sized the need for broader, more robust, high-qual­ity stud­ies.

This review comes at a time when dia­betes is rec­og­nized as a sig­nif­i­cant global health issue.

According to the International Diabetes Federation, approx­i­mately 10.5 per­cent of the global pop­u­la­tion aged 20 to 79 cur­rently has dia­betes.

The World Health Organization (WHO) reported that 1.5 mil­lion deaths world­wide were attrib­uted to dia­betes in 2019, and the preva­lence of dia­betes con­tin­ues to grow.

The WHO esti­mated that the num­ber of peo­ple with dia­betes increased from 108 mil­lion in 1980 to 422 mil­lion in 2014.

Meanwhile, the International Diabetes Federation pro­jected that about 783 mil­lion peo­ple might be liv­ing with dia­betes by 2045, a 46 per­cent increase over the cur­rent fig­ures.

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