Effects Of Soy Food On Blood Glucose - 2687 Words

The Effects of Soy food on Blood Glucose in Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus INTRODUCTION In clinical scenarios, nurse practitioners often encounter such questions from diabetic patients as ‘Can I take soy food to reduce my blood sugar level?’ or ‘Can soy food prevent diabetes?’ or ‘Does eating soy food really help on my diabetic condition?’ Type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) is one of the most common chronic diseases with significant morbidity and mortality, which has become a global-wide health challenge (Shaw, Sicree, Zimmet, 2010). Management for type 2 diabetes is complicated and it is more cost effective when started at an early stage. The main goal is to reduce hyperglycemia (Alberti, Zimmet, Shaw, 2007). It has been widely acknowledged†¦show more content†¦(Anderson, Johnstone, Cook-Newell, 1995; Zhan Ho, 2005). Estrogen therapy favorably modulates glucose homeostasis by reducing fasting glucose (FG). (Espeland et al., 1998). As the soy isoflavone resembles estradiol in its structure, soy has been proposed to bear a favorable effect on glucose homeostasis. In addition, the abundance of glycine and arginine in soy protein stimulate insulin and glucagon secretion from the pancreas. Animal studies suggest that soy extract exerts better glycemic control by improving rats’ glucose tolerance and suppressing weight loss (Ishihara et al., 2003; Shim, Kim, Seo, Lee, 2007) . Previous observational studies reported the soy products consumption may be related to improved glycemic control or lower risk of diabetes (Villegas et al., 2008; G. Yang et al., 2004). In light of the encouraging results from animal and observational studies, prospective randomized controlled clinical t rials (RCTs) were carried out to further clarify the effect of soy products on glucose and insulin management. However, to date, there is a limited number of RCTs testing the effect of soy products on glycemic control and their results are not consistent. Some reports suggested a beneficial effect of soy protein on insulin resistance and glycemic control in women with T2DM, (Jayagopal et al., 2002; Li et al., 2005) while other studies did not find significant effects of soy protein on glycemic