Can This Diet Prevent Diabetes?

TLDR:

• A 20-year study out of Athens, Greece, published in August 2025, followed nearly 2,000 people to track the long-term effects of the Mediterranean diet on the development of type 2 diabetes.

• High adherence to the Mediterranean diet significantly reduced the risk of developing type 2 diabetes, with a 59% reduction for pre-diabetic individuals and a 40% reduction for those with normal blood sugar.

• Even individuals who started with high adherence but later lapsed still saw a significant risk reduction, suggesting the diet's protective benefits are substantial and it should be a key educational tool for physical therapists.

   

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Transcript:

Hey y'all, Dr. Wells here again from St. Augustine Beach. Hope you're having a great day. Today we're going to talk about the Mediterranean diet.

It's probably one of the most evidence-based diets out there. We talk a lot about it in our board-approved continuing ed courses for physical therapists, and this one in particular is pretty cool. It's a publication on International Journal of Food Science Nutrition in August of 2025.

The authors come out of Athens, Greece, and it's part of the Attica cohort study. They've published some really good stuff looking at obesity, cardiovascular heart disease, but this one is focused on 20-year cumulative incidence of type 2 diabetes. What do they do? Well, they took about 2,000 individuals without type 2 diabetes, and they followed them for 20 years.

They looked at their dietary patterns and looked at how closely are they adhering to a Mediterranean diet pattern. What they did is identify four key groups, the first group being the high adherence to Mediterranean diet throughout the entire study, a low adherence, a high adherence at the first half, low adherence in the second, or a low adherence to a high adherence at the end. Interestingly, what they found is obviously those that adhered highly to the Mediterranean diet had a significant reduction in development of type 2 diabetes.

Individuals who were already pre-diabetic in this group, they saw a 59% reduction when they followed the diet tightly. Now, those that had normal blood sugar saw a significant reduction of 40%, right? Interestingly, they said, well, what about those people that had a high adherence, but kind of towards the end, they faded off, right? Towards the end of that 20-year window, they kind of started going back to maybe the Western dietary patterns. Well, they still saw with those that had a pre-diabetic status, a 45% reduction in developing type 2 diabetes.

Overall, what this suggests is that if you stick to a Mediterranean-style diet, your odds of developing type 2 diabetes is significantly low, whether you adhere to the diet highly throughout the entire window of time, or whether you have diabetes or not, or pre-diabetes, so partly that's because a lot of the food patterns that they consist of are predominantly whole, real foods, rich in antioxidants, high in fruits and vegetables, right? Anyhow, I know it's probably not earth-shattering to you, but for us managing individuals that have diabetes, educating around diet is important, and the Mediterranean diet should be one of those tools that PTs pull out of their toolbox frequently, educate and refer for, okay? So, anyhow, if you like this, check out our courses, nutritionalphysicaltherapy.com, and have a great day.