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Digital Organizers Can Help Diabetics With Diet

Posted: Friday, June 30, 2006

New research suggests that handheld digital organizers could help people with diabetes follow a "low-GI" diet -- a potentially effective but complicated eating plan for controlling blood sugar.

The small pilot study found that type 2 diabetics showed better blood sugar control after they were given a personal digital assistant (PDA) equipped to help them follow a low-GI diet.

GI, or glycemic index, refers to the effects a particular food has on blood sugar levels. Foods classified as high-GI, such as white bread and potatoes, tend to trigger a sharp, rapid rise in blood sugar, and some research suggests that limiting high-GI foods could help people manage or even prevent type 2 diabetes.

However, the true usefulness of the low-GI diet is not yet clear, and one of the criticisms of the eating plan is that it's just too complex.

That's where the PDA could come in, said the lead author of the new study, Dr. Yunsheng Ma of the University of Massachusetts Medical School in Worcester.

The 15 adults in the study received nutritional counseling on low-GI eating and then used PDAs with specialized software to help them keep track of their overall GI for the day. They could look up the GI score for a food before they ate it, and the software kept a log of their meals and GI scores for the previous 30 days.

The focus was on controlling overall GI for the day, rather than "forbidding" white bread or French fries, Ma explained.

After six months, the researchers found, patients' HbA1C -- a measure of long-term blood sugar control -- had dipped by 0.5 percent, on average. Calorie intake, body weight and blood pressure also tended to decline, Ma's team reports in the European Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

While he called the findings "encouraging," Ma said that further studies are needed to prove that the digitally-assisted diet is responsible for the positive changes, and to show that there are long-term benefits for diabetes control.

Source: Diabetes In Control: European Journal of Clinical Nutrition, online May 17, 2006