14 DAY TRIAL // Researchers in Germany now say that, according to their investigations, individuals diagnosed with diabetes and ordinary folks should lead similar lives.
More precisely, the specialists maintain that, all things considered, there is no reason why the lifestyle advices given by doctors to diabetics should be different from those offered to healthy individuals.
In a recent paper, Dr. Diewertje Sluik with the German Institute of Human Nutrition Potsdam-Rehbruecke in Nuthetal and his colleagues explain that they reached this conclusion after looking into the medical records of 6,384 people diagnosed with diabetes and 258,911 individuals not suffering with this condition.
As part of their investigation, the researchers focused on several factors previously documented to influence mortality risk, i.e. BMI (body-mass index), waist/height ration, diet, alcohol consumption, smoking and lack of physical activity.
All in all, mortality rates among diabetics taken into consideration for this research were 62% higher than the ones recorded in the case of the healthy individuals.
However, it appears that this difference was largely due to the fact that a poor diet affects diabetics much more than it does healthy individuals.
As far as the other mortality risk factors were concerned, the researchers were unable to pin down any noteworthy differences between the two groups of people.
In light of these findings, Dr. Diewertje Sluik and his colleagues theorize that, although people suffering from diabetes are likely to get more benefits from following healthy lifestyle advice choices, healthy individuals should lead lives similar to theirs.
“It appears that the intake of some food groups is more beneficial (fruits, legumes, nuts, seeds, pasta, poultry, vegetable oil) or more detrimental (soft drinks, butter, margarine, cake, cookies) with respect to mortality risk in people with diabetes,” the researchers write in their paper, as cited by EurekAlert.
“This may indicate that individuals with diabetes may benefit more from a healthy diet than people without diabetes. However, since the directions of association were generally the same, recommendations for a healthy diet should be similar for people with or without diabetes,” they further detail.