Blood Pressure Diet Helps Type 2 Diabetics

Follow Drugslib on

By Dennis Thompson HealthDay Reporter

Medically reviewed by Carmen Pope, BPharm. Last updated on June 17, 2025.

via HealthDay

TUESDAY, June 17, 2025 — A diet meant to lower blood pressure also can be effective in treating type 2 diabetes after a few tweaks, a new clinical trial indicates.

The DASH (Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension) diet effectively treated high blood pressure among type 2 diabetics, researchers reported recently in JAMA Internal Medicine.

“A lot of people are interested in controlling diabetes and their blood pressure through diet and other lifestyle changes,” said senior researcher Dr. Lawrence Appel, a professor of medicine at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.

“Most people in this study were taking more than one blood pressure medication, but we found that you can lower it further with dietary change,” Appel added in a news release. “Blood pressure is one of the most important numbers to control because the higher the number, the higher the risk of stroke and heart disease.”

For this study, researchers developed a new version of the DASH diet they dubbed “DASH4D” — DASH For Diabetes.

The original DASH diet is rich in fruits, vegetables and low-fat dairy, while reducing saturated fat and cholesterol intake, researchers said in background notes. Appel helped develop this original version of the diet.

The DASH4D diet maintains those guidelines while also lowering carbohydrates and increasing the intake of unsaturated fats, to help people maintain stable blood sugar levels, researchers said.

The new take on DASH also reduces potassium intake, to help prevent the kidney disease that often accompanies type 2 diabetes, researchers added.

“The DASH diet has been around for a long time, and is part of the standard treatment for hypertension,” lead researcher Dr. Scott Pilla, an assistant professor of medicine at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, said in a news release.

However, there’s been little study of this diet in people with diabetes, particularly if it’s tweaked to also reduce sodium intake, he said.

For the clinical trial, researchers randomly assigned 85 people to follow one of four diets in random order – the DASH4D diet with lower sodium, DASH4D diet with higher sodium, typical U.S. diet with lower sodium and typical U.S. diet with higher sodium.

About 66% of participants were on two or more high blood pressure meds, researchers said.

The low-sodium DASH4D lowered systolic blood pressure by about 5 points, compared with high-sodium diets, researchers found. Systolic pressure is the top number on a blood pressure reading, and represents the pressure within blood vessels during a heartbeat.

That five-point reduction reduced the risk of stroke by 14%; heart failure by 8%; and heart health events by 6%, results show.

By comparison, taking blood pressure medications typically lowers systolic blood pressure by about 10 points, researchers noted.

“The next steps are to get the knowledge that we gained out to people with diabetes and help them use the diet to make healthy changes,” Pilla said.

“We need to make it easier for people to follow this diet in ways that are affordable and accessible to people of different cultures and with different dietary habits so they can integrate them into their daily life and make them part of their daily routine,” he added.

Sources

  • Johns Hopkins Medicine, news release, June 10, 2025

    • Disclaimer: Statistical data in medical articles provide general trends and do not pertain to individuals. Individual factors can vary greatly. Always seek personalized medical advice for individual healthcare decisions.

    Source: HealthDay

    Posted : 2025-06-18 00:00

    Read more

    Disclaimer

    Every effort has been made to ensure that the information provided by Drugslib.com is accurate, up-to-date, and complete, but no guarantee is made to that effect. Drug information contained herein may be time sensitive. Drugslib.com information has been compiled for use by healthcare practitioners and consumers in the United States and therefore Drugslib.com does not warrant that uses outside of the United States are appropriate, unless specifically indicated otherwise. Drugslib.com's drug information does not endorse drugs, diagnose patients or recommend therapy. Drugslib.com's drug information is an informational resource designed to assist licensed healthcare practitioners in caring for their patients and/or to serve consumers viewing this service as a supplement to, and not a substitute for, the expertise, skill, knowledge and judgment of healthcare practitioners.

    The absence of a warning for a given drug or drug combination in no way should be construed to indicate that the drug or drug combination is safe, effective or appropriate for any given patient. Drugslib.com does not assume any responsibility for any aspect of healthcare administered with the aid of information Drugslib.com provides. The information contained herein is not intended to cover all possible uses, directions, precautions, warnings, drug interactions, allergic reactions, or adverse effects. If you have questions about the drugs you are taking, check with your doctor, nurse or pharmacist.

    Popular Keywords