Tuesday, March 27, 2012

Three days of vegetarianism, experimenting via social nets


The initial topic that we in CAMONI want to socially study is how the protein content in the diet affects type 2 diabetes? And is vegan diet relevant to this question?

The currently available literature indicates that vegetarian and vegan diets present potential advantages for the management of type 2 diabetes. Moreover, increased conformity to vegetarian diets protected against risk of type 2 diabetes even after lifestyle characteristics and BMI were taken into account.
Is it because the vegan diet does not contain animal protein? or maybe it's because on average vegan diets contain less protein?

It is the beneficial effects of gastric bypass surgery (GBP) to the diabetic that have led me to this suggestion, as this surgery reduces immediately the protein consumption.

As the incidence of obesity-induced type 2 diabetes continues to increase worldwide, medical studies indicate that surgery to reduce obesity can almost completely eliminate all manifestations of diabetes.
However please note that glycemic control is improved more after gastric bypass surgery than after equivalent diet-induced weight loss in patients with morbid obesity and type 2 diabetes mellitus.

What is the mechanism of this better metabolic response after GBP?

Several studies suggest that it might be related to the presence of amino acids (the bricks of proteins), e.g.
- Branched-chain amino acids decreased after GBP, but not after dietary intervention
- Five branched-chain and aromatic amino acids had highly significant associations with future diabetes.

As diets high in animal protein are associated with an increased diabetes risk, it is suggested that consumption of energy from protein at the expense of energy from either carbohydrates or fat may similarly increase diabetes risk.

All these findings indicate that accounting for protein content in dietary recommendations for diabetes prevention may be useful.

This is the reasoning for our social net study - If your are diabetic Type 2 and care to try, please become vegetarian for 3 days and measure how it affects your sugar levels.
Please comment here or at facebook how it affected you.

We plan to collect data from many net surfers and see if preliminary conclusions can be deduced. If we trace protein level diabetic effects, it will be interesting to see if we all (men/women, young/old, lean/obese) respond similarly.

IMPORTANT - For a vegan diet please eliminate for 3 days all animal proteins (eggs, meat, fish, milk and its products) and replace it with equal calories from nuts, almonds legume or beans (do not add - bread, sugar or sweets).
Please be carefull to avoid hypoglycemia.
Do not forget to make sure that your physician acknowledges your selected diet.