A study shows that concentrating meals at a certain time of the day helps regulate blood sugar levels better.
Monitoring blood sugar is not the only battle for diabetics. In everyone, having too much sugar in the blood East deleterious for the organization and increases the risk of disease (cardiovascular, metabolic, etc.). Presented at the annual meeting of theEndocrine Society in Chicago on June 15, a report, spotted by EurekAlert!show the interest of an “early” diet on the fluctuation of blood sugar and inflammationregardless of the weightloss. This type of diet consists of limit calorie intake for the first 6-8 hours of the day.
A form of intermittent fasting which makes one think of 16/8 method (we eat for 8 hours, we fast the other 16 hours of the day) except that here the researchers underlined the interest of favoring the taking of early meal during the day rather than late in the evening. The 16/8 method leaves you free to choose whether to fix your meals in the morning or in the evening. For their research, they chose 10 volunteers with prediabetes and obesity. For 7 days, half followed a diet plan where 80% of calories were consumed before 1 p.m. and the other a more usual diet in which 50% of calories were consumed after 4 p.m. The next 7 days, they changed groups. The food was provided to meet the caloric needs of the patients and to maintain their weight in order to measure the effects of this type of diet, without trying to make them lose weight. Everyone’s blood sugar was measured continuously.
“The results show that eating the majority of your calories earlier in the day (before 1 p.m.editor’s note) reduces the time that blood sugar is high (i.e. above normal levels, editor’s note), thus improving metabolic health” commented one of the authors, Jose O. Aleman, assistant professor in the Department of Medicine, Division of Endocrinology, Diabetes and Metabolism at the NYU Grossman School of Medicine (New York).
“One week follow-up of this dieting strategy reduced blood sugar fluctuations” pointed out Joanne Bruno, co-author. “This suggests that early feeding may be a strategy useful for people with prediabetes or obesity For maintain their blood sugar and the prevent progression to type 2 diabetes.” Participants’ weight remained stable throughout the study. These encouraging results now need to be confirmed on a larger scale.