Short-term dieting linked to long-term control of diabetes
Short-term dieting linked to long-term control of diabetes.
Short-term dieting success can help people control diabetes for years -- even if they regain all the lost weight, a new study suggests.
Portland-based Kaiser Permanente researchers tracked the weight gain and loss patterns of more than 2,500 patients newly diagnosed with type 2 diabetes. While most lost no weight, about 300 managed to shed more than 20 pounds in the months after diagnosis.
Four years later, members of the weight-loss group had significantly better control of their blood pressure and blood sugar than the other study volunteers, even though their weight loss was short-lived, reversing after about 18 months. Nearly all had returned to their starting weight by the end of the study.
The findings suggest that people who develop diabetes have a critical window of opportunity to get the upper hand on the disease.
"It might be that your body remembers a healthy state, that if you can get your weight down to a certain point, your body remembers that," said co-author Gregory Nichols, an investigator at the Kaiser Permanente Center for Health Research.
Nichols said the finding matches a pattern in which other early steps to control diabetes have produced long-lasting benefits. For instance, he said, studies have shown that people who achieve rigid blood sugar control soon after diagnosis tend to resist the disease better than people who didn't lower their blood sugar as effectively at the outset.
"I would quickly add, there isn't any bad time to lose weight," Nichols said. It's not clear from the study whether regaining the weight might trigger delayed harmful effects that will show up later. Previous research makes clear that losing weight at any stage, except advanced kidney failure, can reduce the risks of heart disease, blindness, nerve and kidney damage, amputations, and death in type 2 diabetes patients.
-- Joe Rojas-Burke
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