Diet and Exercise Can Reverse Diabetes, Suggests New Study

Highlights

• A lifestyle intervention consisting of a plant-based diet with exercise lowered blood sugar in diabetes patients on medication better than medical care alone.
• More interestingly, 8% of patients who underwent the lifestyle intervention achieved remission of their diabetes.
• Additionally, 63% of the medicated diabetes patients who underwent the lifestyle intervention were able to reduce their blood sugar-lowering medicine.

As published in Diabetologia by Kelly and colleagues from Loma Linda University in California, a lifestyle intervention consisting of whole-food, plant-based meals with moderate exercise added to anti-diabetes medicine works more effectively at improving blood sugar (glucose) levels than medicine alone. While the study’s confirmation of this notion may seem somewhat obvious to some, what may be surprising is that 8% of the patients who underwent the lifestyle intervention achieved remission of their diabetes. In addition to this finding, 63% of the medicated diabetes patients who underwent the lifestyle intervention reduced their blood sugar-lowering medicine. These results support the notion that a whole-food, plant-based diet with moderate exercise can be an effective intervention against diabetes.

“A [whole-food, plant-based] diet with moderate exercise can be offered as a highly effective, evidence-based lifestyle intervention for individuals with type 2 diabetes,” said Kelly and colleagues in their publication.

Interestingly, some research has already suggested that diabetes can be reversed in some individuals as measured with lowered blood sugar. In that sense, Kelly and colleagues’ article adds evidence that a plant-based diet with moderate exercise may be the best way to achieve diabetes reversal.

Adding a Lifestyle Intervention to Medical Care Lowers Blood Sugar and Can Reverse Diabetes

To find whether the lifestyle intervention of a plant-based diet with exercise reverses signs of diabetes compared to standard medical care (SMC)—using medication and not altering diet or exercise habits—the researchers analyzed diabetes patients in the Marshall Islands. They chose participants in this nation since it has the seventh-highest diabetes prevalence globally and because its residents generally have a modifiable, sugar-rich diet.

After initiating a lifestyle intervention program using a whole-food, plant-based diet with moderate exercise for 24 weeks, the Loma Linda-based researchers found that the intervention lowered readings on an indicator of blood sugar levels—an HbA1c test. An HbA1c test measures how much glucose is attached to hemoglobin, a protein in red blood cells, to assess average blood sugar over two to three months. Accordingly, compared to SMC, the additional lifestyle intervention significantly reduced HbA1c levels by about 1% at the end of the 24-week intervention. These findings support that a plant-based dietary intervention with exercise builds on SMC’s therapeutic effects against diabetes.

Since diabetes is reversible for some, Kelly and colleagues assessed whether the lifestyle intervention works better than SMC alone in medicated diabetes patients. Interestingly, they found that 8% of the medicated diabetes patients who underwent the lifestyle intervention achieved remission whereas none of the patients who received SMC alone went into remission. This finding suggests that for some diabetes patients, a lifestyle intervention with a plant-based diet and exercise may reverse diabetes.

To examine whether adding the lifestyle intervention to anti-diabetes medicine may alleviate the severity of diabetes and reduce the need for medicine, Kelly and colleagues looked at the percentage of patients who lowered their dose of glucose-lowering drugs. In that regard, 63% of medicated diabetes patients who underwent the lifestyle intervention were able to reduce their dose of glucose-lowering medicine compared to 24% who received SMC. This result lends further credulity to the notion that a plant-based dietary intervention with exercise alleviates the severity of diabetes.

Disentangling What Lifestyle Intervention Factors Alleviate Diabetes Most

Altogether, these findings suggest that incorporating a whole-food, plant-based diet with moderate exercise in addition to diabetes medication may have a substantial effect on alleviating diabetes severity. Since the intervention included eating only whole, unprocessed foods, a key contributor to the intervention’s mitigation of diabetes may come from eliminating processed foods, not just specifically eliminating meats with a plant-based diet. Disentangling whether this is the case would require setting up a similar human trial that includes unprocessed meats.

It would also be interesting to find how much of the anti-diabetes effects of the intervention came from moderate exercise. Along those lines, a study suggests that as little as two weeks of physical training can reverse early signs of diabetes—prediabetes—in 40% of study participants, which supports exercise’s effects against diabetes. In that sense, further research will be necessary to find how much eating unprocessed, organic foods and exercising regularly contribute to alleviating diabetes, even reversing it in some patients.