Keto diet could help reduce blood sugar and body weight

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Scientists from the University of Michigan have found that a very low-carb keto diet can help people with type 2 diabetes or prediabetes control their blood sugar and lose weight effectively.

Type 2 diabetes is a disease where your blood sugar is too high, while prediabetes means your blood sugar levels are higher than normal but not high enough to be diagnosed as diabetes.

Both are chronic diseases for which diet is an important part of treatment.

Researchers previously found that a very low-carbohydrate ketogenic diet and lifestyle changes, like physical activity, sleep, positive affect, and mindfulness, could help overweight people with type 2 diabetes or prediabetes improve blood sugar control and lose weight.

The ketogenic diet is a high-fat, adequate-protein, low-carbohydrate diet that forces the body to burn fats rather than carbohydrates.

Several studies have shown that such diets may improve blood cholesterol, blood pressure, and blood sugar, reduce appetite, boost weight loss, and lower triglycerides.

In the current study, researchers aimed to determine whether an online intervention based on a very low-carbohydrate ketogenic diet with lifestyle changes or an online diet program based on the American Diabetes Association’s “Create Your Plate” diet would improve blood sugar control and other health outcomes among overweight people with type 2 diabetes.

The team asked overweight people with type 2 diabetes or prediabetes to attend a 32-week online keto diet intervention or an online diet program based on the “Create Your Plate” diet.

They found that after 32 weeks, people in the keto diet group reduced their HbA1c levels more than people in the control group. HbA1c is a blood test used to help diagnose and monitor people with diabetes.

More than half of the people in the keto diet group lowered their HbA1c to less than 6.5%, versus none in the control group.

The researchers also found that people in the keto diet group lost much more weight than people in the control group. More people lost at least 5% of their body weight in the keto diet group compared to the control group.

The researchers also found that people in the keto diet group lowered their triglyceride levels more than participants in the control group.

Triglycerides are a type of fat found in your blood that is stored in your fat cells for energy between meals.

Finally, the team found that dropout rates were low in the keto diet group and high in the control group.

These findings suggest that people with type 2 diabetes can improve their blood sugar control and lose more weight after joining a very low-carb keto diet and lifestyle online program rather than a conventional, low-fat diabetes diet online program.

Thus, the online delivery of a keto diet and lifestyle recommendations may help high-risk people achieve a successful self-management of type 2 diabetes.

If you care about diabetes, please read studies that pomace olive oil could help lower blood cholesterol, and scientists make a major breakthrough in diabetes treatment.

For more information about diabetes, please see recent studies about Vitamin D that may reduce dangerous complications in diabetes and results showing plant-based protein foods may help reverse type 2 diabetes.

The research is published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research and was conducted by Laura R Saslow et al.

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