High-Fat Diet Can Lower Blood Sugar In Diabetics

Diabetics are normally told to follow a low-fat diet and stay away from fatty foods, but a recent study in Diabetologia revealed that a high-fat diet actually improved blood sugar control and blood lipids in diabetics.

The two-year study looked at 61 patients with adult-onset diabetes, who were randomly divided into two groups and told to follow either a high fat, low-carbohydrate diet, or a standard low-fat diet.

Weight loss across both groups was about nine pounds on average, but the interesting part was that the subjects trying the high-fat diet showed much better glycemic control after six months, and blood sugar levels dropped so subjects were able to reduce their diabetes treatments.

It was theorized that the larger amount of saturated fat in the diet would be a problem, but the high-fat diet testers showed that their lipoproteins did not get worse, and their good cholesterol content actually increased.

In spite of their weight loss, subjects on the low-fat diet did not see improvements in either area.

"You could ask yourself if it really is good to recommend a low-fat diet to patients with diabetes, if despite their weight loss they get neither better lipoproteins nor blood glucose levels," study author Fredrik Nystrom, a professor of Internal Medicine, said in a statement.