Nutrition Update

Every month I get the Diabetes Forecast magazine.   It always has some interesting articles on nutrition.  The January/February and May/June 2016 issues have many interesting updates on nutrition and health.  Here are a few. 

• Sit Less, Move More.  Can sitting increase your risk of developing Type 2 Diabetes?  Apparently so.  To study this researchers gave 2,497 adults 24 hour activity monitors.  The 2,497 adults included 1,395 with normal glucose, 714 with type 2 diabetes, and 388 with prediabetes.  Study participants were tracked for 8 days.  The activity differences didn’t seem like much as those with Type 2 Diabetes sat 26 more minutes a day.   Every hour sitting and not moving can increase your chances of developing type 2 diabetes by 22%.  This doesn’t mean you have to run a marathon as study authors noted just standing up every hour helps.  Watching TV, then stand up and walk around during commercials.  Reading?  Stand up and move around every hour.  Have a sitting job?  Stand up when you talk on the phone.  Go to the water fountain for a drink of water.  Move more and sit less throughout your day.  CNN quoted the study’s author as saying, The participants in this study were already at risk for diabetes, so in a person who does not have a predetermined risk, "trying to move for 5 minutes every hour seems right," Henson said.   
•  More Produce, Less Weight?  Are there foods that help you keep off the pounds?  Researchers studied 124,086 adults who kept a record of what they ate.  Adults that ate more fruits and vegetables that contain flavonoids gained less weight over a 25 year period than those that didn’t.  What produce did they eat more of?  Pears, apples, berries and peppers.  So add blueberries to your day, or maybe “an apple a day to keep the pounds away”.
• Drink Water before Meals:  An easy way to drop some pounds may be to drink some water before a meal.  Researchers studied 84 adults trying to lose some weight.  Half drank about 2 cups of water 30 minutes before a meal and the other half did imaging and imagined full stomachs.  At the 12 week mark, the water drinkers lose more weight, 5.3 pounds versus 2.6 pounds for the imagination group.  So fill up the water bottle when you are walking to the water cooler and do so about 30 minutes before lunch.
• Switch Your Fat – most people know they should avoid saturated fat as it has been linked to increased risk of heart disease.  But some people lower their saturated fat but then eat more added sugar foods.  Instead, researchers have found those who replace the saturated fat with unsaturated fats such as olive oil, canola oil and nuts can reduce their risk of heart disease.  Rather than buying no fat salad dressing with all the added sugar, buy a lower fat salad dressing such as a vinaigrette made with olive oil. 

Make some small changes this week for a healthier you.

Sources:  Diabetes Forecast January/February 2016, Diabetes Forecast May/June 2016.  CNN,  Image Source:  Water