A simple addition of a small portion of almonds before each meal can improve blood sugar levels in people with prediabetes, a first ever study conducted by experts in India has suggested. The study has been published in the European Journal of Clinical Nutrition and in the journal Clinical Nutrition.

“Adding almonds in your diet-half an hour prior to all three meals a day could stave off progression of diabetes. The study shows that we can normalise the blood sugar levels of pre diabetics with this strategy. It helped reversed prediabetes, or glucose intolerance, to normal blood sugar levels in 23 percent of the people ,” said lead author of the study Anoop Misra, Professor and Chairman, Fortis-C-DOC Centre of Excellence for Diabetes, Metabolic Diseases, and Endocrinology, a Delhi based hospital.

Misra said 20 grams of almonds, which is almost 17-18 in number, led to a significant drop in overall hyperglycemia in participants.

This study was conducted in participants who were pre diabetes which means that they had slightly raised blood sugar levels, but the blood sugar levels were not so high that they can be called diabetics.

The participants were between the age range of 18 to 60 years.

“In total, we recruited 60 participants in the study and we wanted to see what is the impact of ingestion of almonds, what is the impact on glucose variations and also overall, glycemic control,” said Seema Gulati, head, Nutrition Research Group, National Diabetes, Obesity, and Cholesterol Foundation, and co-author of the study.

The study was conducted in three phases-including the short term study to see the immediate effect of almonds ingestion and a long study to see the difference it made for the participants.”We gave almonds to the participants and reviewed them after every 30 minutes because we wanted to see how the body responds to intake of almonds. After that we went a step further and did continuous glucose monitoring of the participants. We gave them almonds for three days before breakfast, lunch and dinner. The recording was then uploaded on our web based software and we did the calculations. We found that there was a significant drop in overall hyperglycemia,” added Gulati.

She said that the drop was seen irrespective of the age. “The impact was not affected by age or gender,” she said.

In the next phase the researchers gave almonds continuously for three months before major meals. The patients were followed up for three months and were asked to monitor their blood glucose level themselves and maintain a record of what they were eating.

“While they were recording their blood glucose level that itself was a motivational factor for them to stick to regime because the readings the numbers came down so that was kind of encouragement. At the end of three months, we saw that it impacted overall hyperglycemia. The HP levels came down, the fasting glucose levels came down. In fact, there was an overall improvement in all the glycemic parameters at the end of the phase,” Gulati further said.

Misra recommends that almonds be made part of a healthy diet. irrespective of whether they are pre diabetic or pre diabetic.

“This kind of study has been done first ever in India and first ever in South Asia and gains significance. This kind of strong type of robust design is the first time in the world,” he said.