Vitamin C diabetes hope
A VITAMIN C supplement may hold the key to tackling type 2 diabetes.
A Deakin University study has shown taking 500mg of vitamin C twice daily can work to lower elevated blood sugar levels and reduce blood sugar spikes after meals, in people with the chronic and potentially deadly disease.
The study also found high, daily doses lowered blood pressure in people with type 2 diabetes, reducing the chance of heart disease.
With 1.2 million Aussies living with type 2 diabetes, the breakthrough could lead to a widely available, simple, cheap and effective complementary treatment for diabetics.
Lead researcher Glenn Wadley, from Deakin’s Institute for Physical Activity and Nutrition, said trial participants taking vitamin C rather than the placebo had a signifi- cant 36 per cent drop in their blood sugar spike after meals.
“This also meant that they spent almost three hours less per day living in a state of hyperglycaemia,” Associate Professor Wadley said. “This is positive news as hyperglycaemia is a risk factor for cardiovascular disease in people living with type 2 diabetes. We also found that the proportion of people with hypertension halved.”
The study, funded by the Diabetes Australia Research Trust, was recently published in the Journal of Diabetes, Obesity and Metabolism.
He said the dose used was about 10 times the normal dietary intake.
“Vitamin C’s antioxidant properties can help counteract the high levels of free radicals found in people with diabetes,” Prof Wadley said.
Diabetes was a fast growing problem, with more than 100,000 developing the disease in the past year, he said.