Fewer cases 2 diabetes has been observed among individuals consuming antioxidant-rich food on a regular basis.
While there are many ways to describe antioxidants, one definition is any substance that inhibits oxidative damage and removes potentially damaging oxidizing agents in a living organism. The Western lifestyle — especially processed foods, heavy reliance on medications, and high exposure to chemicals or environmental pollutants — seems to lay the foundation for the formation of such free radicals. They, in turn, can accelerated aging, damage cells, break-down tissue, activate harmful genes within DNA, and an overloaded the immune system.
Antioxidants, however, prevent oxydative stress. Some are made from the body itself, while we must get others from our diets by eating high antioxidant foods – mostly fruit, vegetables, tea as well as moderate consumption of alcohol. An antioxidant-rich diet has previously been associated with a lower risk of certain cancers and cardiovascular conditions. A team working for Inserm (Health across generations, Center of Research in Epidemiology and Population Health, Villejuif, France) has now found that antioxidants are similarly associated with a reduced risk of type 2 diabetes.
The French study published in the journal Diabetologia has reported that women with higher antioxidant levels had a 27 per cent reduced risk of type 2 diabetes compared to those with the lowest scores. 64,223 French women all of whom were free from diabetes were recruited from 1993 to 2008, then aged between 40 and 65 years. Using information about each participant’s diet and an Italian database providing the antioxidant capacity of a large number of different foods, the Inserm researchers calculated a score for ‘total dietary antioxidant capacity’ for each participant.
The group then analysed the connection between this score and the risk of diabetes occurrence during the follow-up period. A total of 1,751 women developed type 2 diabetes during the 15-year follow-up period. When the associations between antioxidant score and diabetes risk were analysed, the risk was diminished with increased antioxidant consumption. “This link persists after taking into account all the other principal diabetes risk factors: smoking, education level, hypertension, high cholesterol levels, family history of diabetes and, above all, BMI, the most important factor,” concludes first author Francesca Romana Mancini.
This post is also available in: FR (FR)