Egg Consumption May Benefit People with Diabetes, Study Finds

11 Nov 2015 --- A recent study from the Center for Food Research and Development (CIAD) and the Department of Nutrition at the University of Connecticut has found one of its most important results; that egg consumption in patients with diabetes is not conducive to cardiovascular damage that can cost them their lives.

Dr. Martha Nydia Ballesteros Vasquez, CIAD researcher and coordinator of the study, points out that this is one of the first studies in the world focused on diabetic patients and egg consumption.

In the research, 29 patients under medical supervision and treatment diagnosed with Type II diabetes were asked to consume an egg daily for five consecutive weeks and then return to their normal diet for three weeks.

They were then asked over the next five weeks not to eat eggs and to breakfast on oats, a food that helps maintain regular levels of blood cholesterol.

Dr. Ballesteros Vasquez said of the results after 13 weeks of the study that no differences in the levels of "bad" cholesterol (LDL), triglycerides, glucose or any other parameter of cardiovascular risk was found and that there was no effect on lipid levels in diabetic patients.

However, she also noticed that during the period in which they consumed eggs, patients showed a decrease in markers of inflammation, which is characteristic in people with cardiovascular disease, but not in consumers of oats.

"We consider that egg carotenes, lutein and zeaxanthin, may be the reason why there was a decrease in inflammatory factors, but further research will help us to check.”

"We followed up for more than a month, in which they some were asked to consume eggs, and some to consume oats. The results marked no significant difference between diabetic patients who ate eggs and those who ate oats; no increase in blood lipid levels that would endanger the patient," said the specialist.

The study, in which University of Connecticut Mexican Dr. Maria Luz Fernandez participated, also recognized that liver enzyme aspartate aminotransferase (AST) decreased during the period of egg consumption, which is an increased marker in diseases such as obesity and fatty liver.

They note that in the CIAD Lipid Metabolism Laboratory, there have been several scientific studies that seek to highlight the importance of egg consumption in various sections of the population, particularly due to the effects of the cholesterol they contain, and summarized that it is a very important food that should be present in the Mexican diet, especially in children.

According to the National Union of Poultry Farmers, every Mexican eats 360 eggs per year, equivalent to 22.3 kilos.

"In the seventies they were doing epidemiological studies in Europe to find out why people were dying from heart disease, and some of them related to food. It was found that dietary cholesterol was a cause, and they demonized foods that contained it, especially eggs," he explains, adding that even 40 years later the myth persists amongst doctors and patients.

"What we now know is that 80 percent of people do not respond in an exaggerated manner to egg consumption, i.e that cholesterol does not affect cardiovascular problems, which only happens in the remaining 20 percent of the population.”

"In diabetic patients the first thing physicians ask the patient to do is remove eggs from the diet, because lipid metabolism declines due to insulin deficiency. However, this restriction cannot be generalized," says Dr. Ballesteros Vasquez.