by Ryan Oakeson
It’s time for Life Medicine’s newest monthly blog instalment, Hallelujah!
This month’s we’ll focus on diet and diabetes. Even if you don’t have diabetes, I promise you’ll learn something new. It is incredible how big of an effect diet can have in the treatment of diabetes - and it’s also true that a balanced, conscious, and healthy diet carries enormous benefits for for general health as well as during the treatment and prevention of countless other chronic diseases. So, tune in and get ready to learn an easy yet effective way to change your life. And no don’t worry, your favourite carbs aren’t going anywhere!
Throughout this post, I will be making several references to “healthy” and “unhealthy” food. Basically, what I mean by these terms is that when we consistently eat the ‘healthy’ food, we tend to either see benefits to our health - or at least no negative effects. On the contrary, when we eat large amounts of the ‘unhealthy’ foods and neglect the healthy ones, we may feel full—which undoubtedly feels better than being hungry—but these foods will have long term negative effects to our physical and mental health.
So let’s dig in.
In 2021, food is fast, and some food is certainly cheap. Food is easy. There’s nothing like a classic hamburger, fries, and a soft drink from your favorite fast-food restaurant after a long day at work when you don’t have any energy to cook. In this state, you need something, anything in your stomach ASAP! But what are the repercussions, if any? Does the convenience have any impact on our health? For one thing, when food has been processed or comes from places like fast-food chains, usually a lot of the nutritional value has been lost or traded with salt, fat or other additives (Cornwell et al., 2018; Machado et al., 2019). In order to survive the logistical process of getting to your plate, those ultra-processed foods are also filled with preservatives—not to mention sugar. Ya, let’s talk about that good ole’ sweet stuff.
Sugar—or glucose-fructose—is everywhere. It’s often derived and processed from corn and it’s extremely versatile. There is a high likelihood that if you go into your fridge or cupboards right now, you will find several products listing a word that ends with “-ose” in their ingredient lists. That just means—with some exceptions—that there’s some form of sugar in it. Eating too many of these types of food over a long period of time can be very unhealthy. Don’t get me wrong, there are healthy, naturally occurring sugars—such as in fruit! These latter sugars can be healthy in the sense that they are not processed and come packaged in healthy bundles containing other nutrients like fiber and vitamins. Regardless—sugar is sugar. And any unhealthy amount of sugar can have severe consequences to our health when consumed over years or decades.
Diabetes is a disease that can be classified in two different ways: type 1 is caused by genetic factors and those individuals are born with the partial or complete inability to produce insulin; type 2 diabetics generally develop an inability to respond to insulin, usually due to lifestyle factors. Insulin comes from the pancreas and is a hormone that helps the body regulate the amount of glucose that’s in your blood. Basically, when your body doesn’t have insulin to regulate your blood sugar, there will be dangerous fluctuations in your blood sugar levels. This can have serious health consequences e.g., numbness and tingling in the limbs, along with other severe conditions such as heart disease, blindness, and kidney failure. Type 1 diabetes cannot yet be cured; however, type 2 diabetes can often be partially or completely reversed with dedication to lifestyle modification, and this will be the type that we will focus on.
Again, I’m not saying that we must hit the gym every day to see significant changes, but what I am saying is that focusing on what we put in our bodies as well as what we do with our bodies, will have significant, long term, health benefits.
There are several well-known diets out there that I’m sure you are familiar with: keto, angus, paleo, vegetarian/vegan, etc. Well, the diet that we will focus on is the Mediterranean diet. This diet consists of eating lots of fruits and vegetables, legumes, nuts, whole grains, unsaturated fats—like in olive oil- some seafood, and even alcohol (in moderation). Basically, if you think about the Mediterranean Sea, imagine all the things you might find around that area. That’s what you would include on your plate!
Research has found that adhering to a Mediterranean diet lowers the risk of developing diabetes in middle aged adults (O’Connor et al., 2020). This might not mean much to you if you have diabetes, but it shows that there are diets that help the prevent the development of Type 2. If you do have diabetes, a Mediterranean, low-carbohydrate diet has been found to not only help control blood sugar better than a low-fat diet, but also controls coronary risk factors too (Esposito et al., 2009). Now if you are a Type 2 diabetic and you tie that in with a balance of regular exercise, you can start seeing tvast improvements to your glucose control.
That is a big deal! To further demonstrate the benefits of this diet, an excellent resource to find further sources can be found using this link. There you will find that the list goes on with the health benefits included in eating the Mediterranean diet including but not limited to: lower inflammation, antioxidants to boost the immune system, improvements to memory and cognitive function, a reduced risk of dementia, and actual positive changes in the structure of your brain! If you’re interested, there’s also a diet specifically targetting the relationship between food and with mental health, which is called the MIND diet. This diet is very similar to the Mediterranean with respect to the foods being eaten.
Dieting is hard. It takes motivation, dedication, and contemplation. But if you trust your gut, your gut will take care of you!