A new study found that a lower-calorie Mediterranean diet, exercise, and nutritional support can help substantially reduce the risk of older adults developing type 2 diabetes.
Researchers say that people who cut their daily calories on the Mediterranean diet and engaged in moderate daily exercise, while also obtaining professional weight loss support, had a 31% lower risk of developing type 2 diabetes compared to those who only followed the popular diet.
“Our study shows that modest, sustained changes in diet and lifestyle could prevent millions of cases of type 2 diabetes worldwide,” said coauthor Dr. Frank Hu, the Fredrick J. Stare Professor of Nutrition and Epidemiology and chair of the department of nutrition at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in Boston, per CNN.
The intervention group also experienced a substantial drop in body fat percentage, and, critically, as Hu noted, “a reduction in visceral adiposity (belly fat), and a significant improvement in body mass index.”
Hu stressed that the importance of the findings lay not only in the participants losing weight, but also in their improved body composition, which may have contributed to the reduction in their risk of developing diabetes.
Christopher Gardner, Rehnborg Farquhar Professor of Medicine at Stanford University in California, who directs the Stanford Prevention Research Center’s Nutrition Studies Research Group, said that at first glance, the results were “boring,” as it has long been established that cutting calories and moving more can help lower the risk of diabetes. However, Gardner said the findings were actually “staggeringly stunning.”
That is because he typically sees people unable to maintain positive changes over the long run in other interventions.
“What is staggering is the 6-year adherence to these changes, with very little recidivism,” said Garner.
Remarkably, the dramatic drop in diabetes risk was recorded despite the average weight loss being only around 3% to 4% in the intervention group during the six-year follow-up. Hu said this “shows even modest weight loss along with a healthy diet can have significant long-term benefit on diabetes prevention.”