Nutrition

Flavonoid-rich Fruit and Vegetables Improve Microvascular Reactivity and Inflammatory Status

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Results: In men, the HF F&V diet increased endothelium-dependent microvascular reactivity P = 0.017 with +2 portions/d at 6 wk and reduced C-reactive protein P = 0.001, E-selectin P = 0.0005, and vascular cell adhesion molecule P = 0.0468 with +4 portions/d at 12 wk. HF F&Vs increased plasma NO P = 0.0243 with +4 portions/d at 12 wk in the group as a whole. An increase in F&Vs, regardless of flavonoid content in the groups as a whole, mitigated increases in vascular stiffness measured by PWA P = 0.0065 and reductions in NO P = 0.0299 in the control group.

via Flavonoid-rich fruit and vegetables improve microvascular reactivity and inflammatory status in men at risk of cardiovascular disease—FLAVURS: a randomized controlled trial.

Mom was right.

Yogurt and Diabetes

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Eating yogurt can reduce the risk of getting Type 2 diabetes by 28 percent, compared with consuming none, according to a study published today by Diabetologia. Higher consumption of low-fat fermented dairy products, such as yogurt and some cheeses, also lowered the relative risk of diabetes by 24 percent overall, the study showed.

via Yogurt May Be an Ally in Fight Against Diabetes: Study – Bloomberg.

Update 03.28.14

I’ve started eating yogurt every day.

Mediterranean Diet Cuts Risk of Diabetes

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Compared with a control diet and a Mediterranean diet supplemented with mixed nuts, the olive oil-supplemented Mediterranean diet was associated with a 40% lower likelihood for new-onset diabetes (HR 0.60, 95% CI 0.43-0.85) , according to Jordi Salas-Salvado, MD, PhD, of the Universitat Rovira i Virgili in Reus, Spain, and colleagues.

Dieters who consumed a nut-supplemented Mediterranean diet did not see such protective benefits (HR 0.82, 95% CI 0.61-1.10), they wrote online in the Annals of Internal Medicine.

via Mediterranean Diet Cuts Risk of Diabetes.

Read the article and then the readers’ comments.  The following are some excerpts:

The findings of this study identify inherent weaknesses in methodology. The low fat control group did not adhere to a low fat diet and the improbable risks of CVD were notably higher.

 

I wonder if the researchers would consider the benefits of asking their subjects to spread their food intake more evenly throughout the day rather than the the usual Spanish pattern of negligible breakfast, snack about 11, then large lunch mid-afternoon and a big, late evening meal. Also in my experience travelling in various parts of Spain, the diet includes plenty of pork.’Every bit of the pig but the eyes.’.

 

The olive oil group was probably using that in place of other vegetable oils for cooking and salad. Vegetable oils like soy and corn oil are high in pro-inflammatory omega-6, and are often partially hydrogenated (ie trans fats.) Avoidance of these in the olive group could have made a difference.

 

Be cautious in coming to conclusions based upon this study.  The sample size was small.  Perhaps too little attention was paid to what the participants did not consume.  We all know less red meat is better for health.  The Mediterranean style diet is clearly a healthy diet but I’m not quite ready to attribute all the wonderful benefits to the diet alone.

Think lifestyle.  Despite the increase in US style fast food restaurants in Spain, the overall dietary preference continues to be a Mediterranean diet.  So how much of the study’s effect come from fast food avoidance?

BTW, yesterday was a totally Mediterranean day for me.  Veggie pizza for lunch and a Greek salad with grilled chicken for dinner.

 

 

Dairy Consumption, Type 2 Diabetes, and Changes in Cardiometabolic Traits: A Prospective Cohort Study of Middle-Aged and Older Chinese in Beijing and Shanghai

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CONCLUSIONS: Dairy consumption was associated with a significantly lower risk of type 2 diabetes and favorable changes of cardiometabolic traits in Chinese.

via Dairy Consumption, Type 2 Diabetes, and Changes in Cardiometabolic Traits: A Prospective Cohort Study of Middle-Aged and Older Chinese in Beijing and Shanghai.

What about non-Chinese?  Good news for me though.

Ice cream.

Mediterranean Diet May Protect Kidneys

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In a prospective cohort study, patients whose eating habits were closer to the tenets of a Mediterranean diet had about a 50% reduced odds of developing chronic kidney disease (CKD) over 7 years compared with those whose diets didn\’t resemble the fruit-and-vegetable-rich, low-saturated-fat diet, according to Minesh Khatri, MD, of Columbia University Medical Center, and colleagues.

via Mediterranean Diet May Protect Kidneys.

Metformin and Cognitive Impairment

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In a retrospective study, diabetic patients who were taking metformin had worse cognitive performance than those not taking the drug (odds ratio 2.23, 95% CI 1.05-4.75), Eileen Moore, PhD, of the University of Melbourne in Australia, and colleagues reported online in Diabetes Care.

Additionally, patients with diabetes who had vitamin B12 levels less than 250 pmol/L also had worse cognitive performance (OR 2.29, 95% CI 1.12-4.66), and the association between metformin and cognitive impairment was weakened after adjusting for vitamin B12 levels, they stated.

via In Some Patients Metformin Impairs Thinking.

Low Glycemic Load Diet Lowers Diabetes Risk

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Eating a low glycemic load diet that also follows the principles of the traditional Mediterranean diet can lower type 2 diabetes risk, new research suggested.

People in the study whose eating patterns most closely adhered to the principles of the Mediterranean diet and the low glycemic load diet were 20% less likely to develop diabetes than people who least closely followed the two diets, Carlo La Vecchia, MD, of the Mario Negri Institute of Pharmacological Research in Milan, and colleagues, wrote online in the journal Diabetologia.

via Low Glycemic Load Diet Lowers Diabetes Risk.

I have a very strong family history of diabetes.  A long time ago I told one of the leading endocrinologists in Dallas about my family history and asked what I could do to minimize my risk of developing the disease.

Stay as thin as you can for as long as you can.

Several years ago I adopted a Mediterranean style diet.  When I learned about the glycemic index I started avoiding most foods with a high glycemic index.

Sixty is on the horizon and I’m still not diabetic.

Diabetes Prevention: Lifestyle Change – amednews.com

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The national YMCA of the USA was awarded a three-year, $12 million grant from the federal Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation to make its diabetes-prevention program available to about 10,000 Medicare patients in 17 communities. Medicare fee-for-service patients pay no additional out-of-pocket cost for the YMCA class and 27 private health plans cover it. For other patients, the fee is charged on an income-based sliding scale that varies by facility and can reach $400, says Matt Longjohn, MD, MPH, the national health officer at YMCA of the USA.

26 million Americans have diabetes, more than 8% of the U.S. population. Researchers estimate that one in three U.S. patients — about 80 million — can be classified as prediabetic either because of their scores on diagnostic blood tests or a combination of age, family history of diabetes and other factors. Patients with prediabetes are two to five times likelier than patients with normal blood glucose to develop type 2 diabetes. Ten percent of prediabetics will become diabetics within seven years, says Ronald T. Ackermann, MD, MPH, associate professor of medicine at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago.

A randomized controlled trial of more than 3,000 patients with prediabetes found that patients exposed to an intensive lifestyle-modification program that aimed for 7% weight loss and 150 minutes in weekly physical activity were 58% less likely to develop diabetes than those who received standard lifestyle recommendations and took a placebo pill. During the study’s three-year period, the patients who got the comprehensive lifestyle support in the form of 16 lessons covering diet, exercise and behavior modification avoided diabetes at a rate nearly double that of patients who got the standard advice and took the diabetes drug metformin.

For every seven prediabetics who participated in the lifestyle-modification program, one case of diabetes was avoided, said the study in the Feb. 7, 2002 issue of The New England Journal of Medicine.

via Diabetes prevention: Set on a course for lifestyle change – amednews.com.

Fruit Tied to Fewer Aortic Aneurysms

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Through 13 years of follow-up, men and women who said they ate more than two servings of fruit a day had a 25% lower risk of developing AAA (HR 0.75, 95% CI 0.62-0.91) compared with those who ate less than 0.7 servings a day, according to Otto Stackelberg, MD, of the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, and colleagues.

And those who ate the most fruit had a 43% lower risk of developing a ruptured AAA (HR 0.57, 95% 0.36-0.89), the researchers reported in the Aug. 20 issue of Circulation: Journal of the American Heart Association. There were no such associations with vegetable intake.

via Fruit Tied to Fewer Aortic Aneurysms.

Low Glycemic Load Diet Lowers Diabetes Risk

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People in the study whose eating patterns most closely adhered to the principles of the Mediterranean diet and the low glycemic load diet were 20% less likely to develop diabetes than people who least closely followed the two diets, Carlo La Vecchia, MD, of the Mario Negri Institute of Pharmacological Research in Milan, and colleagues, wrote online in the journal Diabetologia.

via Low Glycemic Load Diet Lowers Diabetes Risk.