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A spoonful of vinegar helps reduce blood sugar levels

Source: Arizona State University

By Diane Boudreau
Dec. 1, 2004

A spoonful of vinegar helps reduce blood sugar levels | myfoodistry

Diabetes killed more than 70,000 Americans in 2001 alone. The disease also takes a toll on the people who live with it. In general, controlling diabetes requires massive lifestyle changes and/or expensive medications. Carol Johnston says there may be a cheaper, easier way to get the same results; in fact, you probably have the help in your kitchen cabinet.

Making headlines and climbing Top 10 lists is not always a sign of success. Consider diabetes, which has swept the nation like wildfire. Diabetes is now the sixth leading cause of death in the United States.

Diabetes killed more than 70,000 Americans in 2001 alone. The disease also takes a toll on the people who live with it. Diabetes-related nerve damage accounts for more than half of all non-traumatic amputations in this country. Diabetes is also the leading cause of new cases of blindness and the leading cause of end-stage kidney disease.

In general, controlling diabetes requires massive lifestyle changes and/or expensive medications. Carol Johnston says there may be a cheaper, easier way to get the same results—in fact, you probably have the help in your kitchen cabinet.

Johnston is a professor of nutrition at Arizona State University’s East campus. When she started developing menus to help prevent and control diabetes, she began with a high-protein, low-carbohydrate diet. The diet worked amazingly well, but it involved major changes from the way people usually eat. Johnston feared they would give up and start downing Twinkies in no time. She wondered if there was an alternative.

Johnston struck gold while reading through some older studies on diabetes. Actually, she struck vinegar. “While writing my literature review I saw an article about vinegar. I was making all these massive changes. I found that maybe you can just add vinegar to your diet,” she says.

Five studies conducted in the 1980s suggested that vinegar could improve insulin sensitivity and thus help control diabetes. For some reason, the mass media and the public never caught on.

“It’s odd that no one ever pursued that,” Johnston says. She decided to take the opportunity herself.

In the ASU scientist’s study, participants drank one of two solutions before eating a high-carb meal of a bagel and orange juice. Some subjects drank a vinegar solution (vinegar, water and saccharine). Others were given a placebo drink (water and saccharine).

Read the rest of this fascinating article at the source.

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