A high risk for diabetes? Healthy diet switches off the genes

Type 2 diabetes is a very preventable disease, even in people who have ‘bad genes’.

There are 76 gene variants that raise the risk of diabetes—but a healthy diet and exercise can switch them off, new research has established.

People with the variants have the same risk of developing diabetes as those without the genetic profile—just as long as they follow a healthy lifestyle, say researchers from the University of Eastern Finland who head up the T2D-GENE trial.

They recruited a thousand men, aged between 50 and 75 years, 600 of whom were at high genetic risk of diabetes, and the rest didn’t have the genes.  Over the three years of the trial, all the participants improved their diet, and ate more vegetables, fruits and berries, and improved the quality of fats, while restricting high-sugar processed food.

Although none of the participants were told if they had the gene profile or not, they all saw an improvement in their glucose metabolism—and the rates of diabetes were actually lower in the at-risk group.

What do you think? Start a conversation over on the... WDDTY Community