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I eat the plant based diet It has amazing effects on your health.What we learned from the research limit red meat Eating whole grains, legumes, and a variety of colorful fruits and vegetables can help lower cholesterol and risk of cardiovascular disease, Prevent type 2 diabetes And even more extend human lifespan – Needless to say, life on earth.
However, when it comes to preventing diabetes, these benefits are only seen if a plant-based diet is followed by a healthy diet that avoids highly processed and sugary foods. A new study analyzed different foods.
A 12-year analysis of the dietary patterns of more than 113,000 participants in the UK Biobank Study, a longitudinal study of the health of the UK population, found that people’s intake of fresh fruit, vegetables and whole grains classified into two categories.
The top 25% of people primarily ate a plant-based diet that was low in sweets, desserts, refined grains, and sugary drinks. The bottom 25% of people ate more of those unhealthy plant-based foods.
Compared to people at the bottom of the quintile, people who ate the most whole grains, fresh fruits, and vegetables and limited their intake of unhealthy options had a lower risk of diabetes, according to study results published Tuesday in the journal reduced by 24% diabetes and metabolism.
People who ate the healthiest diets also lost weight body mass index Waist circumference also improves, blood sugar levels improve, and inflammation levels decrease.
The study found that this benefit extended to people who are genetically predisposed to diabetes or who have other risk factors for diabetes, such as obesity.
“These data are extremely important, especially for people considered to be at high risk of developing type 2 diabetes, as they show that following a healthy plant-based diet can significantly reduce the risk. ” said Alisha Thompson, lead author and doctoral student. Northern Ireland’s Queen’s University Belfast said in a statement.
However, research shows that people who eat the least healthy plant-based diets have a 37% higher risk of developing type 2 diabetes, in addition to having larger waist circumference and higher levels of triglycerides, a type of cholesterol. found.
In fact, obesity is “an important mediator underlying the increased risk of type 2 diabetes in people who eat an unhealthy plant-based diet,” says co-author and lecturer at the Institute for World Food Security, Queen’s University Belfast. Tillman Kuehn, professor of public health nutrition. The Medical University of Vienna said in a statement:
How can a healthy plant-based diet help protect against type 2 diabetes? By influencing a variety of anti-diabetic mechanisms, “such as blood sugar and lipid levels and lower body weight,” says Kuhn. said.
Another finding was that the kidneys and liver play an important role in reducing the risk of type 2 diabetes, said co-author Aidin Cassidy, professor at Queen’s University Belfast Institute for Global Food Security. Ta.
“Improvements in both metabolism and liver and kidney function as a result of a healthy plant-based diet may explain how this diet reduces the risk of type 2 diabetes. for the first time,” Cassidy said. In a statement.
Wesley Soares Ferracini/Moment RF/Getty Images
Experts say some plant-based diets are healthier than others, so focus on whole grains and fresh fruits and vegetables.
Although the study only found an association rather than a direct cause-and-effect relationship, the results are “interesting,” Duane Mellor, a registered dietitian and senior instructor at Aston Medical School in Birmingham, UK, told the Science Media Center. said in a statement. In London.
The analysis “looked at aspects of liver health and other measures of inflammation and examined how they are associated with diet and risk of developing type 2 diabetes,” said the researchers, who were not involved in the study. No, Mellor said. “This suggests a number of possible designs for future studies to actually assess whether this type of plant-based diet can actually reduce the risk of developing type 2 diabetes. ”