Low glycemic index diets not necessarily beneficial for heart, diabetes

A new research has indicated that a low glycemic diet does not improve insulin sensitivity, lipid levels or blood pressure.

In new findings led by researchers at Brigham and Women's Hospital (BWH) in Boston and Johns Hopkins University (JHU) in Baltimore, researchers looked at glycemic index' effect on cardiovascular disease (CVD) and diabetes and found that low glycemic diets did not improve insulin sensitivity or cardiovascular risk factors.

Frank M. Sacks said that the study results were very surprising and they hypothesized that a low glycemic index would cause modest, though potentially important improvements in insulin sensitivity and CVD risk factors.

Sacks added that their findings demonstrated that using glycemic index to select specific foods did not improve LDL cholesterol, HDL cholesterol, triglycerides, blood pressure or insulin resistance.

Sacks explained that they studied diets that had a large contrast in glycemic index, while at the same time we controlled intake of total carbohydrates and other key nutrients, as well as maintained baseline body weight.

Sacks continued that they found that composing a healthful diet with low-glycemic index carbohydrate containing foods rather that high-glycemic index foods did not improve insulin sensitivity, HDL or LDL cholesterol levels or systolic blood pressure.

The researchers note that future studies are needed to see if low glycemic index diets are helpful with type 2 diabetes or for long-term weight loss and previous research has shown inconsistent results on whether low glycemic index helped people lose weight.

These findings are published in JAMA.