The diet and diabetes link: It’s not what you think

Can diabetics throw away their insulin pumps simply by changing their diets? Israeli research published in Diabetes Care suggests that the standard diet recommended for diabetics is making things worse. Perhaps counter intuitively, eating a big breakfast of starches and sugars can help diabetics replace the need to inject insulin, while at the same time reducing the weight gain associated with diabetes and improving overall cardiovascular health.

Type 2 diabetics must inject themselves with insulin, a hormone that regulates the movement of sugar into liver, muscle and fat cells, up to four times a day. The injections keep patients alive but trigger a vicious cycle where increasingly higher doses are required. In addition to insulin injections, diabetics generally follow a diet nicknamed “6M” –six small meals spread throughout the day, including a bedtime snack to prevent a drop in sugar levels during the night. The new diet protocol is dubbed 3M and calls for just three meals a day, starting with bread, fruit and sweets in the early hours of the morning, a substantial lunch and a small dinner (specifically lacking any starches, sweets and fruits). The 3M diet seems to be better matched to our circadian rhythm, which is optimized for eating in the morning and fasting during the evening and night, the research shows. The 6M diet, by contrast, “has not been effective for sugar control, so diabetics require additional medication and insulin,” explains co-lead researcher Prof. Daniela Jakubowicz of Tel Aviv University and Wolfson Medical Center’s Diabetes Unit.“Insulin injections [also] lead to weight gain, which further increases blood sugar levels.”-- More...