|
 People with type 2 diabetes who ate protein and vegetables before
they consumed carbohydrate-heavy bread and orange juice had a
significantly lower increase in blood sugar after the meal, compared
to when they ate carbs first, Dr. Alpana Shukla and Dr. Louis Aronne
of the Comprehensive Weight Control Center at Weill Cornell Medicine
in New York City found.
The decrease “is comparable to the kind of effect you see with some
of the drugs we use to treat diabetes,” Shukla told Reuters Health
in a telephone interview. “Eating carbohydrates last may be a simple
strategy for regulating post-meal glucose levels.”
Keeping blood sugar in check is crucial for people with type 2
diabetes, in part because it helps protect them from severe
complications including heart disease, vision loss and nerve damage,
Shukla noted. Typically, the researcher added, diabetic individuals
are advised to cut down on their carb intake and stick with complex
carbs rather than simple sugars.
To follow up on small studies showing that eating protein before
carbs led to a smaller bump in blood sugar than vice versa, the
researchers had 16 men and women with type 2 diabetes consume the
exact same meal on three separate occasions, one week apart, eating
the items in a different order each time.
Study participants ate bread and orange juice first, took a
10-minute rest, and finished up with chicken and salad; ate the meal
in the reverse order; and consumed the chicken, veggies and bread as
a sandwich, accompanied by orange juice. Every time, participants
consumed the same amount of calories and carbohydrate.
When people ate the carbs last, their post-meal blood glucose levels
were about half as high as when they ate carbs first, and about 40
percent lower than when they ate all meal components together. The
carbohydrate-last meal was also associated with lower insulin
secretion and higher levels of glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1), a
gut hormone that helps regulate glucose and satiety. Insulin levels
required to keep study participants’ glucose under control were
about 25 percent lower when they followed the carbs-last plan.
[to top of second column] |
“We all recognize that while it’s good to eat less carbs to control
blood sugar levels, it may sometimes be difficult to follow this
advice,” Shukla said. The new findings offer people a simple
strategy for preventing glucose spikes when consuming carbs, she
added.
“In the real world, when people actually eat carbohydrates at the
end of the meal after consuming vegetables and protein, they will
probably end up consuming somewhat less,” the researcher noted. The
lower insulin requirements and increase in GLP-1 the study team
observed suggests that closing a meal with carbs may also be helpful
for weight management, Shukla added, although more research is
needed.
Aronne and Shukla are now testing the carbs-last approach in people
with so-called pre-diabetes, when blood sugar is abnormally elevated
but falls short of the cutoff for diagnosing diabetes. People with
elevated blood sugar are at increased risk of progressing to
full-blown diabetes and the study team wants to see if the carbs-last
strategy can play a role in diabetes prevention.
SOURCE: http://bit.ly/2hyxkAJ BMJ Open Diabetes Research and Care,
September 1, 2017.
[© 2017 Thomson Reuters. All rights
reserved.] Copyright 2017 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published,
broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
|
