‘Stone Age’ diet keeps Type 2 diabetes away

3 July, 2007:

Latest research has shown that Type 2 diabetes could be prevented if people ate the diet of the ‘Stone Age’ or the Paleolithic era which consisted of fruits, nuts, vegetables, and lean meat or fish.

Researchers at the Lund University in Sweden found that patients with poor glucose control greatly improved their ability to handle sugar after switching to ‘pre-historic’ eating habits.

Type 2 diabetes is a life-long disease marked by high levels of sugar in the blood. It occurs when the body does not respond correctly to insulin, a hormone released by the pancreas.

The disease occurs mainly in people aged over 40. The initial line of treatment is diet, weight control, and physical activity.

The most common symptoms of Type 2 diabetes are excessive thirst, increased urination, fatigue, and blurred vision.

The ‘Paleolithic’ diet given to the volunteers was similar to what early modern humans were eating 70,000 years ago. At that time, before the advent of farming, humans were hunter-gatherers and their diet consisted of lean meat, fish, fruit, vegetables, root vegetables, and nuts.

Cereals, dairy products, refined fat and sugar, which provide most calories of the modern diet, became staple foods with the start of agriculture about 9,000 years ago.

For the study, the Swedish researchers asked 14 glucose-intolerant heart patients to follow the ancient diet.

A similar group of 15 patients adopted a supposedly healthy ‘Mediterranean’ diet featuring whole-grain cereals, high consumption of bread, low-fat dairy products, fruits, vegetables, unsaturated fats, olive oil, fish, and red wine.

The Mediterranean diet is a modern nutritional model inspired by the traditional dietary patterns of some of the countries of the Mediterranean basin, particularly Greece and southern Italy.

All participants of the study suffered from boosted blood sugar after eating carbohydrates, and most had symptoms of Type 2 diabetes.

After 12 weeks, the carbohydrate-linked blood sugar fell by 26% in the ‘Stone Age’ diet group. In contrast, the carbohydrate-linked blood sugar barely changed for those on the ‘Mediterranean’ diet dropped by only 7%.

At the end of the study, all the patients in the ‘Paleolithic’ diet group had normal blood glucose.

The main difference between the two groups was a lower intake of dairy products and grains, including bread, and higher fruit consumption in the ‘Paleolithic’ group.

Dr Staffan Lindeberg, a member of the research team concludes: “If you want to prevent or treat Type 2 diabetes, it may be more efficient to avoid some of our modern foods than to count calories or carbohydrates.”

It was also found that the improved glucose tolerance associated with the ‘Stone Age’ diet was unrelated to changes in weight, though consumers of the ‘Paleolithic’ diet became slimmer.

Hence the researchers concluded that something more than calorific intake and weight loss was responsible for the improved response to carbohydrates.