Effect of Low Carbohydrate Diet on Type 2 Diabetic Patients and Usefulness of M-Value
In both developed and developing countries, diabetes mellitus has explosively increased,
and there has been a lot of ongoing discussion regarding calorie restriction and
low-carbohydrate diet for dietary treatment.
LCD was originally developed by Bernstein, Atkins and others, and now it becomes a
universal topic of discussion.
The Japanese Dietetic Association recommended taking 50-60 % carbohydrate,
but our group treated DM patients by LCD with 12% carbohydrate since 1999,
and experienced a good response and prognosis.
LCD often accompanied with increase of ketone bodies as a toxic substance,
but recent study found the physiological role of beta-hydroxybutyrate,
especially in the normal delivery and very low carbohydrate treatment was
effective to treat gestational diabetes.
It caused a paradigm change to use LCD for the treatment of diabetes.
Recently, postprandial hyperglycemia is reported to be
a risk factor of cardiovascular events.
Several evaluation methods, such as M-value and mean amplitude of glycemic
excursions have been proposed to estimate the risk.
Efficacy of these indexes under the LCD dietary treatment needed
to be analyzed. By combining these 2 streams, we have investigated
blood glucose changes in diabetic patients under a controlled meal of CR and LCD
in the light of diabetic and M-value aspects.
The subjects of the study were 26 T2DM patients who planned to receive LCD therapy
for 2 weeks. They were 12 males and 14 females, with an average age 62.6±8.6 years old,
ranging from 38 to 78 years old.
Diabetes Res Open J. 2017; 3(1): 9-16. doi: 10.17140/DROJ-3-130
