High protein beats high carbohydrate diet for biomarkers of metabolic syndrome
Regulating insulin is the key factor metabolic syndrome, diabetes and weight loss. In accordance with that, a randomized controlled trial just published in the journal Diabetes Care offers more evidence that a higher protein (with carbohydrate) diet improves multiple biomarkers better than a high carbohydrate diet. The authors determined to...
"......study the effects of high-protein versus high-carbohydrate diets on various metabolic end points (glucoregulation, oxidative stress [dichlorofluorescein], lipid peroxidation [malondialdehyde], proinflammatory cytokines [tumor necrosis factor-α and interleukin-6], adipokines, and resting energy expenditure [REE]) with high protein–low carbohydrate (HP) and high carbohydrate–low protein (HC) diets at baseline and after 6 months of dietary intervention."
In other words, how does high protein compare with high carbohydrate in the regulation of blood sugar, inflammation, and the metabolic rate of energy production? To answer this they randomized obese, pre-menopausal women ages 20–50 years without diabetes or pre-diabetes to be on either a high carbohydrate (55% carbohydrates, 30% fat, and 15% protein) or high protein (40% carbohydrates, 30% fat, and 30% protein) diet for 6 months. They measured the above-mentioned biomarkers at the beginning and the end of the 6 months. The high protein diet won out dramatically for every one of the metabolic end points:
"After 6 months of the HP versus HC diet (12 in each group), the following changes were significantly different by Wilcoxon rank sum test for the following parameters: dichlorofluorescein (−0.8 vs. −0.3 µmol/L), malondialdehyde (−0.4 vs. −0.2 μmol/L), C-reactive protein (−2.1 vs. −0.8 mg/L), E-selectin (−8.6 vs. −3.7 ng/mL), adiponectin (1,284 vs. 504 ng/mL), tumor necrosis factor-α (−1.8 vs. −0.9 pg/mL), IL-6 (−1.3 vs. −0.4 pg/mL), free fatty acid (−0.12 vs. 0.16 mmol/L), REE (259 vs. 26 kcal), insulin sensitivity (4 vs. 0.9), and β-cell function (7.4 vs. 2.1)."
That's a resting energy expenditure (number of calories burned at rest) of 259 kcal for the high protein diet versus 26 kcal for the high carbohydrate regimen. Other marked differences included insulin sensitivity (as would be expected), inflammation, pancreatic function and oxidative stress. The authors conclude:
"To our knowledge, this is the first report on the significant advantages of a 6-month hypocaloric HP diet versus hypocaloric HC diet on markers of β-cell function, oxidative stress, lipid peroxidation, proinflammatory cytokines, and adipokines in normal, obese females without diabetes."