Daily Yogurt Consumption May Help Lower Type 2 Diabetes Risk

Brett Smith for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online

Full of protein and calcium, a serving of yogurt can be a healthy choice to start the day, and now a new study has shown that a daily serving can also lower your risk of Type 2 diabetes.

Published in the journal BMC Medicine, the new study included the findings of three prospective cohort analyses which tracked the medical history and lifestyles of over 190,000 health care professionals over several decades – the Health Professionals’ Follow-up Study (HFPS), the Nurses’ Health Study (NHS) and Nurses’ Health Study II (NHS II).

At the beginning of each study, volunteers filled out a survey to collect baseline data on lifestyle and incidence of chronic illness. Volunteers were then interviewed every two years with a compliance rate of over 90 percent. Volunteers were ruled out if they had diabetes, coronary disease or cancer at baseline. Volunteers were also ruled out if they did not provide any data on dairy intake.

“Our study benefited from having such a large sample size, high rates of follow up and repeated assessment of dietary and lifestyle factors,” said study author Mu Chen, a researcher at the Harvard School of Public Health.

In the three study groups, more than 15,000 cases of Type 2 diabetes were discovered during follow-up. The scientists learned that the overall dairy intake had no connection to the risk of getting Type 2 diabetes. When viewing intake of specific dairy products and considering for chronic illness risk factors, it was found that a high intake of yogurt was connected with a reduced risk of contracting the metabolic condition.

The study team then followed up by integrating their results and other released scientific studies, up to March 2013, that looked into the connection between dairy products and Type 2 diabetes. The analysis discovered that intake of one daily 10-ounce serving of yogurt was linked with an 18-percent reduced risk of Type 2 diabetes.

“We found that higher intake of yogurt is associated with a reduced risk of Type 2 diabetes, whereas other dairy foods and consumption of total dairy did not show this association,” said study author Frank Hu, a professor of nutrition and epidemiology at the Harvard School of Public Health. “The consistent findings for yogurt suggest that it can be incorporated into a healthy dietary pattern.”

The researchers noted that prior study has found that calcium, magnesium, or particular fatty acids contained in dairy products may reduce the chance of Type 2 diabetes. Research has also revealed that probiotic bacteria in yogurt enhance fat profiles and antioxidant conditions in people with Type 2 diabetes. They said this might have a risk-lowering impact in creating the metabolic condition and called for clinical trials to see if yogurt does indeed create a lower risk for the disease.

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May we suggest – 100 Days of Real Food: How We Did It, What We Learned, and 100 Easy, Wholesome Recipes Your Family Will Love by Lisa Leake.