Could A Gluten-Free Diet Reduce Your Risk Of Diabetes?

Could a Gluten-Free Diet Reduce Your Risk of Diabetes?

As the prevalence of diabetes continues to rise, prevention becomes increasingly important. In recent years, several studies have assessed the effects of gluten on diabetes risk. Read on to learn what the researchers found and if a gluten-free diet could help you prevent diabetes.
The prevalence of diabetes has skyrocketed in recent decades. Consider the following:
An estimated 9.4 percent of the U.S. population has diabetes, and 33.9 percent has prediabetes. Together, this adds up to 100 million affected Americans (1).
Five million people in the United States are expected to have type 1 diabetes by 2050, including roughly 600,000 children and adolescents (2).
Diabetes has reached epidemic proportions and is a familiar topic on my blog. You may have seen my 2015 article on reversing type 2 diabetes and more recently, how a fasting mimicking diet might soon be a viable treatment option for type 1 diabetes.
But what if we could prevent diabetes in the first place? Wouldn’t that be the best solution? In this article, I’ll review how gluten consumption or avoidance might affect your risk for type 1 and type 2 diabetes. We’ll start with type 1 diabetes.
The gluten–leaky gut–diabetes connection
The immune system has the important job of distinguishing foreign invaders from the body’s own tissues. When this process is disrupted, the body can start to attack some of its own cells, a condition called autoimmunity. In type 1 diabetes (T1D), the immune system attacks the beta cells of the pancreas. These beta cells are responsible for the secretion of the hormone insulin, Continue reading

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Is going gluten-free giving you diabetes? New study links diet with the disease

Gluten-free diets adopted by growing numbers of health-conscious consumers enhance the risk of developing Type 2 diabetes, scientists have warned.
A major study by Harvard University suggests that ingesting only small amounts of the protein, or avoiding it altogether, increases the danger of diabetes by as much as 13 per cent.
The findings are likely to horrify the rising number of people who are banishing gluten from their daily diet, encouraged by fashionable “clean eating” gurus such as Jasmine and Melissa Hemsley.
People without Celiac disease may reconsider limiting their gluten intake for chronic disease prevention, especially for diabetesDr Geng Zong, Harvard University
Gluten is found in wheat, rye and barley and gives food a chewy texture and elasticity during the baking process.
Only around 1 per cent of people are genuinely gluten-intolerant, a condition called coeliac disease, however some estimates put the proportion of adults adhering to gluten-free diets in the UK at more than 12 per cent.
The researchers behind the study have suggested that people who are limiting their gluten intake who are not coeliacs should think again, and pointed out that there is no evidence that going gluten-free has any health benefits.
The Harvard team examined 30 years of medical data from nearly 200,000 patients.
They found that most participants had a gluten intake of below 12g a day, which is roughly the equivalent to two or three slices of wholemeal bread.
Within this range, those eating the highest 20 per cent of gluten had a 13 per cent lower risk of developing Type 2 di Continue reading

Going gluten free may raise your risk of type 2 diabetes

Celebrities like Gwyneth Paltrow, Victoria Beckham and Miley Cyrus have promoted going gluten free, but new research suggests people without celiac disease or a gluten intolerance may be unnecessarily raising their risk of type 2 diabetes by following the trendy diet.
"Gluten-free foods often have less dietary fiber and other micronutrients, making them less nutritious and they also tend to cost more,” study author Dr. Geng Zong, a research fellow in the Department of Nutrition at Harvard University's T.H. Chan School of Public Health in Boston, Massachusetts, said in a news release.
Gluten is a complex protein that gives bread and cake their sponginess, and for people with celiac disease, eating gluten can be deadly. For those with gluten sensitivity, gluten consumption can lead to gastrointestinal issues, potentially from a weak gut.
Although celiac disease rates have remained stable, going gluten free is now trendier than ever, a November 2016 study published in JAMA Internal Medicine shows.
DO MEN AND WOMEN FARE BETTER ON DIFFERENT DIETS?
For the new research, which was presented at the American Heart Association's Epidemiology and Prevention / Lifestyle and Cardiometabolic Health 2017 Scientific Sessions, researchers analyzed three long-term studies consisting of nearly 200,000 people. In each study, participants reported on their diets every two to four years, and researchers estimated their gluten intake and diabetes rates from those surveys.
Researchers observed that most participants consumed less than 12 grams of gluten per day, and within that range, those who Continue reading

How To Manage Diabetes In Toddlers

Your heart is in your stomach. Your toddler has just been diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes. What do you do? Where do you begin? How are you going to manage diabetes in a toddler? The fear and overwhelming worry can consume you when you are a parent who has just been informed that their toddler has diabetes. But fear not. Parents who have been there before you share their experiences and expertise to parents of toddlers in your shoes. Educating yourself about diabetes will alleviate your fears. So let’s get started with some tips to help keep your child safe, and at the same time, give you peace of mind.
Suzanne’s story
When Suzanne contacted TheDiabetesCouncil, she was beside herself. Her son had been admitted to the hospital. Shortly after, she found out that her child had Type 1 diabetes. It was like someone had taken a baseball bat, and hit Suzanne across the head with it. She felt dazed and helpless. On top of all that, she had an overwhelming sense of dread and fear. Her child has Type 1 diabetes, and he will have it for life. We decided to look into some tips to help Suzanne and others.
Our top tips for caring for a toddler with diabetes
Understand that you, (the parents) are the primary person responsible for managing your child’s diabetes
Remember that as the parent, you are the “case manager,” or primary person(s) responsible for your toddler’s diabetes care.
Use the tell, show, do method with toddlers
When you are trying to perform medical procedures on toddlers, a great method to use is the “tell, show, do,” method. As a nurse, we use this method al Continue reading

Child's Plague: Inside the Boom in Childhood Diabetes

When 7-year-old Gus Ramsey of Weston, Massachusetts, was found to have type 1 (juvenile) diabetes in September 2007, it seemed mere coincidence that Grayson Welo, age 6 and living around the corner, had been diagnosed with the same disease a few months before. After all, type 1 was considered rare—only about 15,000 new cases were diagnosed annually in the United States at the beginning of the decade, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). At least Gus’s parents could be reassured that they lived in a healthy community: Weston, population 11,134, is the wealthiest town in the state, with three golf courses, 13 soccer fields, 19 baseball diamonds, and not a single fast-food restaurant.
Yet two months after Gus’s diagnosis, another child, Natalia Gormley, was found to have the disease on her tenth birthday. She lived on the other side of town. In January 2008 12-year-old Sean Richard was diagnosed. He lived less than a mile away. Then 8-year-old Finn Sullivan became the fifth case of type 1 diabetes diagnosed in Weston in less than a year. He lived on Gus’s block, just six doors down. And the cases kept on coming. Six-year-old Mya Smith, from nearby Wellesley, received the diagnosis in April. On June 15 came the jaw-dropper, when Walker Allen was diagnosed. His father, basketball star Ray Allen, scored 26 points two nights later in game six of the NBA Finals to give the Celtics their first championship in 22 years. Far more notable was Walker’s age: just 17 months.
Weston’s school nurses had never seen anything like it. There were now ei Continue reading