Eat more whole grains to lower diabetes, heart risk
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A diet high in whole grains may lower a person’s likelihood of developing diabetes and heart disease, new study findings show.
Among more than 900 healthy men and women, those who reported consuming the most whole grains had lower levels of cholesterol and various markers of heart disease and better-controlled blood sugar.
“This suggests that people with a high whole-grain intake may have lower risks of diabetes and ischemic heart disease,” said study author Majken Karoline Jensen, of Aarhus University Hospital in Denmark.
Jensen and colleagues found that healthy men and women who reported the highest intake of whole grains had levels of homocysteine, a blood protein that has been tied to heart disease and stroke, that were 17 percent lower than those who reported consuming the least amount of whole grains.
Apart from the better cholesterol and blood sugar levels, levels of insulin and C-peptide, a marker of insulin production, were also 14 percent lower in the high whole-grain consumers, the researchers report in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.
Furthermore, concentrations of leptin, a hormone that generally reflects body fat levels, were 11 percent lower among the whole-grain eaters than among their counterparts.
“Together with a growing body of evidence on the effects of refined carbohydrates versus whole grains, our study suggests that replacing refined grain products with whole grain products may be beneficial in terms of lowering cholesterol levels and maintaining a constant blood sugar,” Jensen told Reuters Health.
SOURCE: American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, February 2006.
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