Some people with type 2 diabetes who follow a low-carbohydrate diet may see improvements in their body’s ability to regulate blood sugar, even if they don’t lose excess weight, a new study has found.
For the study, researchers randomly assigned 57 middle-aged adults with type 2 diabetes to either a low-carbohydrate diet (about 9 percent of calories from carbs) or a high-carbohydrate diet (about 55 percent of calories from carbs). Participants followed their assigned diets for 12 weeks, eating meals provided by the researchers. They also stopped taking any medication for type 2 diabetes during the study.
By the end of the study period, people on the low-carb diet saw more than twice as much improvement in how well cells in their pancreas called beta cells could produce, store, and release insulin in response to glucose, or sugars, according to findings published in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism.
“Our research should not be interpreted to mean that a carbohydrate-restricted diet can replace medical therapy in those who need it, especially patients at risk of cardiovascular disease, heart failure, or chronic kidney disease,” says a study coauthor Marian Yurchishina nutrition researcher at the University of Alabama in Birmingham.