The solution to the fight against diabetes and obesity?

Larissa Melville completed her traineeship in the editorial team of . After studying biology at Ludwig Maximilians University and the Technical University of Munich, she first got to know digital media online at Focus and then decided to learn medical journalism from scratch.

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Do muffins or carrots make your blood sugar soar? The answer is not as simple as previously thought: Apparently people react very differently to the same food. According to this, only a personalized diet may be really effective.

The blood sugar level is primarily influenced by food. When it comes to nutrition, many people use the so-called glycemic index (GI) as a guide. It should show to what extent carbohydrate-rich foods increase blood sugar levels and help you choose the right foods. But does the stated GI actually achieve the desired blood sugar levels?

Blood sugar level in sight

Eran Segel from the Weizmann Institute in Israel and his colleagues investigated this question. They checked the blood sugar level of 800 subjects aged 18 to 70 years every five minutes for a week. During this time, the participants ate one of four predefined breakfast options each morning. They also made a note of any other food they ate. They also recorded their sleep and exercise behavior. The researchers also asked the participants about their health, determined their body mass index (BMI), did blood tests, checked their glucose levels and took stool samples.

Same food, different values

When analyzing the data obtained, the researchers found that the blood sugar level always behaves very similarly in individual cases after consumption of a certain food. However, it was completely different when they compared different people: For example, the blood sugar level rose sharply in some study participants after they had eaten bananas, but not after they had nibbled on cookies. For other participants, however, exactly the opposite was the case.

"The big differences we found in blood sugar spikes in different people who ate identical meals illustrate why a personalized diet is more likely to help people stay healthy than a set diet," says Segal.

Intestinal flora houses other microorganisms

In order to understand the differences in individual food utilization, the researchers analyzed stool samples from all test subjects. The result: the rise in blood sugar after a certain meal was accompanied by the occurrence of special microorganisms. This underpins the thesis that obesity, diabetes and other diseases are apparently related to the occurrence of certain intestinal bacteria.

Individual nutritional recommendations from the computer

“Based on the study data, we developed personal dietary recommendations that are intended to prevent and treat obesity and diabetes,” says Segal. For this purpose, the researchers developed an algorithm that is supposed to predict which foods will cause the blood sugar level to rise particularly in relation to a person. For a week, the team tested on 26 test subjects whether this personal nutritional recommendation is also effective. In fact, the test subjects' blood sugar levels remained at a low level and showed fewer fluctuations. In addition, the number of “good” intestinal bacteria increased during the diet and that of the “bad” bacteria decreased.

“It becomes interesting when the benefits of such personalized diets are investigated over a longer period of several months or even years,” the researchers write. If it were possible to control the blood sugar level in this way, this could serve the prevention and treatment of diseases with a chronically impaired glucose control, such as obesity or prediabetes.

Sources:

Zeevi D. et al .: Personalized Nutrition by Prediction of Glycemic Responses. Cell. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cell.2015.11.001

Press release of the Weizmann Institute of Science from November 19, 2015

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