Mediterranean diet helps more than one chronic condition

By Dr. Ananya Mandal, MDJan 2 2011

In a study that was published in the Oct 13, 2001 issue of Diabetes Care, authors had reported that Mediterranean diet can reduce the risk of developing diabetes significantly. Those on this diet were 52 percent less likely to develop diabetes, compared with those who adhered least to the diet. Salas-Salvadó J. of Universitat Rovira i Virgili in Reus, Spain and colleagues compared two groups of subjects following two Mediterranean diets, one with nuts at 30 grams per day and the other with olive oil at 1 litre per week, with those on a low-fat diet.

They followed up the patients for four years and found that incidence of diabetes in two Mediterranean diets was 10.1 percent and 11.0 percent respectively, compared to 17.9 percent among the controls. However Mediterranean diet was not linked with any significant changes in body weight or physical activity. The authors concluded, “Mediterranean diets without calorie restriction appear to be effective in the prevention of diabetes in subjects at high cardiovascular risk.”

An October 2009 study had shown that Mediterranean diet may also reduce risk of depression. The study appeared in Archives of General Psychiatry. The study led by Sánchez-Villegas A and colleagues from University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Spain followed 10094 initially healthy Spanish individuals in hopes to establish the association between use of Mediterranean diet and depression risk. During a 4.4-year follow-up, 480 cases of depression were identified. The researchers found those who adhered most closely to the Mediterranean diet were up to 42 percent less likely to be diagnosed with depression, compared with those who adhered least to the diet.

In a more recent study published Dec 24, 2010 issue of Nutrition, Metabolism and Cardiovascular Disease, Menotti A and colleagues from Associazione per la Ricerca Cardiologica, Via Latina similar benefits have appeared for heart disease. The authors found that Mediterranean diet protects against coronary heart disease or CHD. The team analyzed data from 1139 men aged 45 to 64 years who were free of coronary events at baseline and followed for 40 years. One unit of the Mediterranean Adequacy Index was associated with a 26 percent reduction in CHD mortality in 20 years and 21 percent in 40 years of follow-up.