The US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention current figures show that a massive 29 million Americans have type 2 diabetes and another 86 million have pre-diabetes. People who have the disease are at risk of blindness, heart attacks, kidney failure and even amputations amongst a whole range of other complications and risks.
A new report that has just been released shows that a return to a whole foods vegetarian diet could change the outcomes for type 2 diabetics. A change of this nature could help reverse diabetes, lower weight, blood pressure and cholesterol. It could allow the 115 million Americans who are affected by this diseases to reduce their medication or even get off them altogether.
Dr Neal Barnard along with a team of researchers from the USA and Japan including the Physicians Committee’s Susan Levin has published a new meta-analysis showing that a plant based diet significantly improves diabetes management.
This new analysis focused on longer-term effects and combined the effects of all available studies. It was calculated that the benefit of leaving meat out of the diet was as much as 0.7 points whilst other studies shoed a 0.4 average reduction. Whilst these number can appear as small, anyone with diabetes knows that an improvement of this magnitude is very significant.
The question is, if diet changes are so effective, what aren’t more doctors prescribing plants before before pills?
Whilst some believe that such changes would be difficult for patients to adhere to, studies now show that patients actually want to make the change. The reason for this that unlike the generally prescribed diabetes diet, a vegan diet does not require counting calories, portion control or limiting carbohydrates. Even strenuous exercise routines can be omitted.
Click here to read this report on the Huffington Post
Click here to read the new report in the Journal of Cardiovascular Diagnosis and Therapy
