Glycemic Index Education Leads to Better Diabetes Control

Nine weeks of education about the glycemic index in foods is enough to encourage adults with type 2 diabetes to adopt better dietary habits that result in improvements to their health, recent research suggests.

Participants in a clinical trial attended weekly sessions to learn about the potential benefits of low-glycemic-index foods – carbohydrates that are digested slowly and are less likely to spike blood-sugar levels than are carbohydrates that have a high glycemic index.

After nine weeks, the participants had adopted a lower glycemic-index diet and recorded lower weight, smaller waists and improved blood sugar levels.

And when they were tested again another nine weeks later – during which they received no additional education – the participants had maintained most of those benefits.

The research addresses a controversy in the nutrition community, where some practitioners believe the principles behind maintaining a low-glycemic-index diet are too complicated for average consumers.

“We found that with education, people with diabetes were able to adopt a lower glycemic-index diet. And it had a significant improvement in their weight control and glucose control,” said Carla Miller, senior author of the study and an associate professor of human nutrition at Ohio State University.

“A vast majority of people with diabetes don’t get sufficient education about their condition when they are diagnosed. And yet for many patients, that’s the only time they receive nutrition education. What they really need is continued education and support to help them maintain good control.”

The research is published in a recent issue of the journal Public Health Nutrition.

In the study, people with diabetes were randomized into one of two groups. One group participated in the nine-week intervention immediately, and the other group waited for nine weeks before undergoing the same intervention.

The 103 participants who completed the study were between the ages of 40 and 70 years, had been diagnosed with type 2 diabetes for at least one year, and did not require insulin therapy for diabetes management. For the most part, participants were already doing a good job of controlling their blood glucose levels.

Each group education session lasted between 90 minutes and two hours. Session topics included self-monitoring food intake and portion sizes, carbohydrate counting and maintaining behavioral change. Overall, the intervention emphasized selecting lower-glycemic-index foods instead of restricting overall carbohydrate intake.

The glycemic index is represented by a scale from 1 to 100. Foods that tend to slow the speed of digestion and prevent rapid increases in blood sugar include many vegetables, whole grains, dairy foods, nuts and seeds, beans and fruits. They are considered low-glycemic-index foods if they have an index of 55 or fewer points. Foods with a point value of 100 are the equivalent of pure glucose.