A new clinical study has found that a modified version of the DASH diet—originally designed to reduce high blood pressure—can also help people with type 2 diabetes manage their blood sugar levels.
The research was led by scientists at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and published on August 5 in the journal Nature Medicine.
The original DASH diet, which stands for Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension, was created in the 1990s with support from the National Institutes of Health.
It focuses on eating more fruits, vegetables, and low-fat dairy while avoiding saturated fats and cholesterol. While this diet has long been recommended for people with diabetes, its effects on blood sugar had not been clearly proven until now.
In the new study, researchers adapted the DASH diet to make it more suitable for people with type 2 diabetes. They called this new version the DASH for Diabetes diet, or DASH4D.
This version has fewer carbohydrates, more healthy fats, and lower potassium levels to make it safer for people who also have kidney problems—a common issue in people with diabetes.
The study involved 89 adults with type 2 diabetes who followed two different diets over a 20-week period. For 10 weeks, they ate meals based on the DASH4D plan, and for the other 10 weeks, they ate a standard American-style diet.
All meals were prepared for them and had the same number of calories. Participants wore glucose monitors to track how their blood sugar changed during each diet phase.
The results showed that the DASH4D diet significantly lowered blood sugar. On average, participants had glucose levels 11 mg/dL lower than when eating the standard diet. They also spent about 75 more minutes each day with their blood sugar in the healthy range.
For people with very high blood sugar at the start of the study, the benefits were even greater—these individuals saw their time in the healthy range improve by around three hours per day.
Importantly, the DASH4D diet did not cause dangerous drops in blood sugar (hypoglycemia), and overall glucose levels were more stable. This kind of improvement is linked to a lower risk of complications like heart and kidney disease, which are common in people with diabetes.
The study used a “crossover” design, meaning each person acted as their own control by trying both diets. This helped researchers get clearer results even with a small group of participants.
Most participants—67 percent—were women, and 88 percent were African American. Trained staff prepared more than 40,000 meals during the study, which took place from 2021 to 2024.
Dr. Elizabeth Selvin, senior author of the study, says this is the first controlled study to show such strong improvements in blood sugar from a DASH-style diet. Dr. Michael Fang, another lead researcher, added that the DASH4D plan was designed to be realistic and easy to follow for everyday life.
Diabetes and high blood pressure are major health problems in the U.S., often caused by diets high in sugar, fat, and salt. About 35 million Americans have type 2 diabetes.
The original DASH diet has already been proven to lower blood pressure, and now the DASH4D version could offer a powerful new tool for managing diabetes as well.
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The study is published in Nature Medicine.
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