Eat this Food or Take this Pill? & When you eat could effect your JEANS!

Eat this Food or Take this Pill? A choice for Diabetics?

According to a recent article in medpage today, a study demonstrated that diabetics given a higher fat, lowered carbohydrate diet was effective in managing blood sugar and prevented the need for hypoglycemic agents.

An excerpt from the article stated:

"Among diabetics who followed a Mediterranean-style diet, only 44% required antihyperglycemic drug therapy, compared with 70% of patients who followed a standard low-fat diet (95% CI -31.1% to -20.1%, P<0.001), according to a report in the Sept. 1 Archives of Internal Medicine."

The conclusion in the abstract at the Archives of Internal Medicine stated:

"Conclusion: Compared with a low-fat diet, a low-carbohydrate, Mediterranean-style diet led to more favorable changes in glycemic control and coronary risk factors and delayed the need for antihyperglycemic drug therapy in overweight patients with newly diagnosed type 2 diabetes."

My thoughts:

This is great news- conventional medicine is studying the importance of prevention and how lifestyle is a key component to the causation of disease. This article validates the fact that disease does not just happen when serum lab values reach the magic number for an ICD-9 diagnostic code, but that underlying factors and lifestyle choices effect a person's health outcomes.

To Eat the (organic) Twinkie Now or Later?? ;)

Another recent study in the Obesity journal focused on the timing of eating and weight gain. According to the summary on medpage, mice fed at times that they should be sleeping gained more weight than mice that ate during normal feeding hours. This was true despite the amount of food consumed.

Can this effect transfer to humans? Maybe. Dr. Mercola summarized an article in June that also reported weight gain in sleep-deprived individuals.  

Different mechanisms for this "late night gain" effect have been suggested. One common  sense reason stated by Dr. Hyman in his book, Ultra Metabolism, was that less sleep and its resultant fatigue led to increasing food intake as an attempt to build up more energy. Another explanation could be the deregulation of hormones in the gut, such as leptin, from an off balance circadian rhythm. Whatever the reason, and regardless of weight, most experts will agree, that sleep is important!