Foods that Heal

After your diabetes diagnosis, you'll be much more likely to notice the never-ending stream of reports in the media about how this or that food has healing properties.

Can you really use dark chocolate to control your blood pressure and yogurt to keep your blood sugar in line?

Alas, the answer in every case is "No, not if you actually want to make significant improvements."

Even worse, some of the foods touted by their manufacturers as "healthy" based on research that we'll demonstrate below is criminally flawed, may even worsen your condition.

A Perfect Example of a Perfectly Flawed Study - "Soy Yogurt Could Help Control Diabetes"

This news item was distributed by the AP in November of 2006. Here's the entry I wrote about it in my Diabetes Update Blog


Soy Yogurt Could Help Control Diabetes

A more perfect example of flawed research would be tough to find.

1. The study concludes that blueberry soy yogurt "controls" diabetes because it has more of a phytochemical which inhibits the enzymes that break down sugars than the other fruit yogurts it was compared to.

In this study one fruit yogurt (full of sugar, of course!) is only compared to other fruit yogurts with even more sugar as far as how much phytochemical it contains.

Note also that there is a pharmaceutical drug that completely inhibits the same enzymes discussed here. It has at best a very weak affect on blood sugar and only in people with very mild blood sugar abnormalities. That drug is Precose. The tiny amounts of phytochemicals found in this yogurt, of course, would have a far weaker effect than the weak drug, Precose.

2. The researchers drew all their conclusions about "controlling diabetes" from the presence of these phytochemicals in the food. They did not observe the effect of the sugary fruit-filled yogurts on blood sugar. Fruit yogurt is full of sugar--usually 23 grams per serving, often more. That is enough to propel most people controlling with diet alone into dangerous blood sugar territory.

3. The researchers claimed that soy fruit yogurt lowered ACE, a hormone involved with the regulation blood pressure, more than other yogurts. I imagine it also lowered it more than Milky Ways and chocolate cake. This does NOT make it a drug in food form.
Furthermore, they extended this finding about the effect on ACE to make the claim that their sugary fruit yogurt lowers blood pressure. But blood pressure in human beings was not actually examined in this study. Again, the powerful pharmaceutical drugs that suppress ACE only work for people with diabetes in relatively large doses, probably hundreds of times higher than the amount of the phytochemicals found in the sugary yogurt.

4.One major company that makes soy yogurt, LightLife, coincidentally happens to have headquarters located near the UMASS lab doing the research. (In Turners Falls, two miles from my house. So I know what I'm talking about.) Lightlife was recently purchased by Conagra, a huge conglomerate that grows soy. The article does not disclose whether LightLife/Conagra funded this study or others being done at this nutrition lab. Wanna guess if they were?

Finally, The study did not mention that soy is poisonous to thyroid glands and that people with type 2 diabetes have a high incidence of thyroid disease and should therefore avoid soy foods. (This is discussed further HERE

The article concludes that, of course, everyone knows that a diet high in fruit and whole grains is what diabetics need.

Would someone send this lab a blood sugar meter and ask them to observe the effect on blood sugar of their fruit and sugar-laden yogurts compared with, say, a nice piece of chicken breast with cheese?

Does Dark Chocolate Control Blood Pressure?

If you have diabetes, controlling your blood pressure is the next most important thing you can do to keep yourself healthy after controlling your blood sugar.

So you probably were thrilled on July 4, 2007, when you saw some version of this headline in your newspaper: "Dark Chocolate lowers blood pressure!" But before you hit the Hershey's, it's worth taking a look at those pesky details.

Here are two different online versions of the story you can refer to, each includes only part of the data released to the press:

Dark chocolate in a medicinal light

Dark Chocolate Lowers Blood Pressure, New Study

In the words of the first article: The study took "44 adults ages 56 to 73 who had untreated pre-hypertension or mild, stage 1 hypertension. Test participants were divided into two groups. One consumed a daily dose of dark chocolate; the other the same amount of white chocolate."

The second version includes an important fact omitted in the first: "Every day for 18 weeks, the volunteers were instructed to eat one-square portions of a 16-square Ritter Sport bar, or a similar portion of white chocolate. White chocolate doesn't contain cocoa."

So, after consuming their square of Ritter Sport dark chocolate every day "Systolic blood pressure, the top number, fell an average of nearly three points and diastolic dropped almost two points in the group that ate dark chocolate, compared with no change in blood pressure readings in the group eating white chocolate."

Sounds pretty good doesn't it?

But here's the kicker. In over half the versions of the story which I read online the following piece of information was omitted:
Average blood pressure at the start of the 18-week test was 147 over 86.

This means that at the end of the study the average blood pressure had been lowered to 144 over 82, which I'm sure your doctor will confirm is still much too high!

So here's what the journalists should have been asking, but didn't ask.

1. Why were people with damagingly high blood pressures allowed to maintain those damagingly high blood pressures for 18 weeks without being put on one of the many effective drugs that could have lowered them rather than being subjected to what turned out to be a feeble and mostly ineffective treatment?

2. Why didn't anyone ask whether German candy manufacturer, Ritter Sport, whose candy was used exclusively in this study funded this German study? If they did, why didn't someone point out the ethical issues involved in delaying treatment for high blood pressure for 18 weeks in order to promote the dubious health benefits of their candy?

I like chocolate as much as the next woman, possibly more. So, trust me, if dark chocolate had healing properties, I'd be healed!

But this study, contrary to the headline, really shows that eating chocolate, whatever its benefits, does not provide enough improvement in blood pressure to make chocolate an alternative to one of the more effective methods available for getting blood pressure control. And when the chocolate companies are rolling out $3 chocolate bars plastered with health claims, this is worth keeping in mind.

Here are a couple of tried and true methods for controlling your blood pressure that you should be aware of:

1. Cut your carbs. A large proportion of those who adopt a lower carbohydrate diet sees their blood pressure drop.

2. Cut your salt intake. Many people are salt sensitive, and if you are one, cutting down on salt can make a huge difference. Try to keep your daily intake under 1 gram. Hint: one half can of canned soup has an entire day's worth of salt in it. You don't even want to know about what's in "snack" food.

3. Exercise regularly.

4. Lose weight if you are able.

3. If you are still running a blood pressure higher than normal (which tops out at 120/80) talk to your doctor about starting what would be the appropriate blood pressure medication for you. If you have diabetes, it should NOT be a diuretic (hydrocholorothiazide) as these drugs raise blood sugars. Lisinopril or another ACE inhibitor is the recommended drug. A month's worth of Lisinopril can be bought for $4 at Wal-Mart so cost shouldn't be a problem. If you can't take an ACE inhibitor, an ARB is recommended. Both these classes of drugs fight insulin resistance and also protect the kidneys.

It goes on and on

Lycopene in tomatoes curing everything from diabetes to cancer, miracle antioxidants in blueberries, black raspberries that can cure cancer. Each food championed by a scientist funded by a company that sells the food and only years later, some confirming study that can't duplicate the effect.

What are you to do? Well, an obvious place to start would be to eat as many freshly grown vegetables grown in your region (as opposed to in third world countries with damaging pesticide loads and other problems with food contamination. If you can, grow a vegetable garden. Eat a wide range of foods. Keep your carbs low enough to avoid damaging spikes.

And demand that journalists reveal who funded research that makes claims for miracle foods.