November 8, 2007 by: Keith Heimpel
Key concepts: diabetes, food, caveman diet
Who Writes This Diabetes Stuff Anyway
Look Here
See Harlan's Other Health Web Sites
Look Here
(ProcessedFoodsNews) UK, Now, in the first controlled study of a Paleolithic (stone age) diet in humans, Lund University, Sweden, heralds the simple diet of the caveman.
This caveman or hunter-gatherer diet, as it is often called, is nothing new. One of the first suggestions that following a diet similar to that of the late Paleolithic period would improve a person's health was made in the New England Journal of Medicine in 1985 by S. Boyd Eaton and Melvin Konner.
Our ancestor, the caveman was consuming fruits, vegetables, nuts, lean meats and fish over a span of 2.5 million years of human evolution, before the emergence of agriculture. The modern staples: cereals, dairy products, refined fat and sugar, have made up the bulk of our population's calories for only 10,000 years at the most.
The switch from the Paleolithic diet to our modern agrarian foods took place over a mere 2000 years, a relatively brief period of time in the history of our species.
Hunter-gatherers flourished over a 100,000 plus generation span. Agriculture was invented 500 generations ago. 10 generations have lived since the start of the industrial age. Only two generations have grown up with highly processed fast foods. In a subsequent article in 1988, Eaton puts this timeline into prospective,
"The problem is that our genes don't know it, they are programming us today in much the same way they have been programming humans for at least 40,000 years. Genetically, our bodies now are virtually the same as they were then."
There are modern human populations today which never made the switch. Dr. Staffan Lindeberg, of the Department of Medicine, Lund University notes from earlier studies by his research group, "A remarkable absence of cardiovascular disease and diabetes among the traditional population of Kitava, Trobriand Islands, Papua New Guinea, where modern agrarian-based food is unavailable."
In their recent clinical study, the researchers have now compared 14 patients who were advised to consume a Paleolithic diet for three months with 15 patients who were recommended to follow a Mediterranean diet (considered to be the healthiest modern food choice) with whole-grain cereals, low-fat dairy products, fruits, vegetables and refined fats generally considered healthy.
All participants "had increased blood sugar after carbohydrate intake (glucose intolerance), and most of them had overt diabetes type 2. In addition, all had been diagnosed with coronary heart disease.
"Those in the Paleolithic group were recommended to eat lean fruits, vegetables, root vegetables and nuts, meats, fish, and to avoid grains, dairy foods and salt.
The following results are verbatim from Science Daily, which adapted them directly from a press release issued by Lund University. "The blood sugar rise in response to carbohydrate intake was markedly lower after 12 weeks in the Paleolithic group (–26%), while it barely changed in the Mediterranean group (–7%). At the end of the study, all patients in the Paleolithic group had normal blood glucose.
The improved glucose tolerance in the Paleolithic group was unrelated to changes in weight or waist circumference, although waist decreased slightly more in that group. Hence, the research group concludes that something more than caloric intake and weight loss was responsible for the improved handling of dietary carbohydrate.
The main difference between the groups was a much lower intake of grains and dairy products and a higher fruit intake in the Paleolithic group. Substances in grains and dairy products have been shown to interfere with the metabolism of carbohydrates and fat in various studies."
"If you want to prevent or treat diabetes type 2, it may be more efficient to avoid some of our modern foods than to count calories or carbohydrate," says Staffan
Lindeberg.
|
Jacobsen Publishing privacy policy
We use third-party advertising companies to serve ads when you visit our website. These companies may use information (not including your name,
address, email address, or telephone number) about your visits to this and other websites in order to provide advertisements about goods and
services of interest to you. If you would like more information about this practice and to know your choices about not having this information used by
these companies, click here
|
|
|
