Combat Type II Diabetes With A Vegan Diet

Type II diabetes is a pathology closely linked to lifestyle. A bad diet coupled with a sedentary lifestyle gives us many more tickets to suffer it than those who have those who eat well and do physical activity on a regular basis.

According to the WHO, 8.5% of the world’s adult population suffers from it, which means around one in eleven adults (1). We suffer from type II diabetes when our body is not able to use insulin properly and this causes glucose to accumulate in the bloodstream.

Until relatively recently, it was a disease that appeared only in adulthood, but currently it is also seen in children and adolescents, as a result of the terrible diet and sedentary lifestyle that affects a large part of the child population, whose obesity rates do not they cease to increase adding to the risk factors.

Although there is drug treatment for diabetes, the first therapeutic option should always be diet and physical activity. And it is in this area that the vegetarian diet has a lot to contribute.

Vegetarian eating as a treatment for type II diabetes?

The vegetarian and vegan diet has very remarkable results in terms of prevention and treatment of type II diabetes. So much so that there are studies that conclude wondering why this approach is not being used as a therapeutic diet in the increasingly common cases of diabetes.

Let’s see a little about what jobs we are talking about.

In 2010, researchers Trapp and Barnard (2) said that vegetarian diets, especially vegan ones, had benefits in the prevention and management of type 2 diabetes and that this should be taken into account by healthcare professionals. Judging from the dietary advice given today, it seems that we have not paid much attention to them.

In 2013, studying Seventh-day Adventists, who are a group that mostly eat a vegetarian diet, it was concluded that vegetarian and vegan diets are associated with a substantial and independent lower risk of suffering from diabetes (3).

Already in 2014 a new work was published that corroborates the protection offered by the vegan diet against this disease (4) and considers it a treatment alternative to consider for patients with this pathology.

The vegan diet shows better results than the diet proposed by the American Diabetic Association and also that of the National Cholesterol Education Program when it comes to controlling blood glucose and improving the lipid profile. In other words, the vegan diet improves the results of the omnivorous diet specifically designed for a specific nutritional treatment. There is nothing.

Finally, already in 2015, a review on a vegetarian diet in the prevention and treatment of type II diabetes (5) was published that only supports the previous results.This review indicates that a significant reduction in fat has been found visceral and an improvement in insulin resistance, as well as better markers in relation to oxidative stress with the vegetarian diet than with the conventional diet used in diabetes. And they add that the vegetarian diet is sustainable in the long term and that in addition to physical health it can positively influence mental health. Interesting right?

The most remarkable thing about these studies is that the vegan or vegetarian diet is not being compared to the traditional diet, which can be greatly improved. If not, in front of diets specially designed for the treatment of diabetes.

Come on, we are winning the competition playing against “the best” and emerging victorious. And not in one study only. And also when confounding factors are eliminated.

Even so, it is common for uninformed health professionals to advise against the vegetarian diet in diabetics for the most varied reasons, when with the evidence in hand, what they should do is encourage all their patients to walk towards it, even if only temporarily . That is, using it as a therapeutic tool.

Bibliography

1. WHO | World report on diabetes. QUIEN. 2016.
2. Trapp CB, Barnard ND. Usefulness of vegetarian and vegan diets for treating type 2 diabetes. Curr Diab Rep. 2010; 10 (2): 152-8.
3. Tonstad S, Stewart K, Oda K, Batech M, Herring RP, Fraser GE. Vegetarian diets and incidence of diabetes in the Adventist Health Study-2. Nutr Metab Cardiovasc Dis. 2013; 23 (4): 292-9.
4. Trepanowski JF, Varady KA. Veganism Is a Viable Alternative to Conventional Diet Therapy for Improving Blood Lipids and Glycemic Control. Crit Rev Food Sci Nutr. 2015; 55 (14): 2004-13.
5. Kahleova H, Pelikanova T. Vegetarian Diets in the Prevention and Treatment of Type 2 Diabetes. J Am Coll Nutr. 2015; 34 (5): 448-58.