Healthy Eaters Can Ignore Glycemic Index, Studies Show

If you are not dealing with diabetes, you may not have to worry about glycemic index, according to recent findings published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Glycemic index measures just how quickly foods contain carbohydrates and how these raise glucose levels found in the blood stream. Though previous studies have shown that these can harm your heart health, new findings showed that they had little effect on patients who did not have diabetes.

For the study, 163 overweigh adults were provided with four heart-healthy diets to be followed for five weeks at a time between April 2008 and December 2010. At least two diets were completed by the participants, including the following four choices:

• High carbohydrate foods on high glycemic index
• High carbohydrate foods on low glycemic index
• Low carbohydrate foods on high glycemic index
• Low carbohydrate foods on low glycemic index]

Results showed little difference when participants ate high or low glycemic index foods.

"We were really surprised," said study co-director Lawrence J. Appel, M.D., M.P.H., a professor of medicine and director of the Welch Center for Prevention, Epidemiology and Clinical Research at Johns Hopkins Medicine, in a news release. "We did not detect any clear benefit of the low glycemic index diets on the major risk factors for heart disease, and we found no evidence of benefit for diabetes prevention."

Furthermore, Dr. Robert Eckel, a previous president of the American Heart Association and professor at the University of Colorado Anschuz Medical Campus in Aurora, noted that glycemic index is not so important in your diet if you are already heart health.

"If you're eating a heart-healthy diet, glycemic index is not important to consider, I think the emphasis need to be on the overall diet pattern," he concluded, via capitalwired.com. 

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