The effect of nutritional education on blood glycemic, lipidemic, and body mass index control among sample of type 2 diabetes

Type 2 diabetes mellitus is a chronic metabolic disorder, characterized by poor glycemic control nutritional education enhances people’s knowledge on healthy food choices that improve blood glycemic and lipidemic control leading to better overall health.

This study is to examine the effect of nutritional education on the glycemic/lipidemic control and the body mass index in patient with type 2 diabetes mellitus.

A quasi-experimental study was conducted on 40 patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus and recruited by non-probability convenience sampling method over 3 months duration. BMI, HbA1c, total cholesterol, low density lipoprotein-C, high density lipoprotein-C, and triglyceride were measured at baseline and after 3 months during which during which five nutritional educational lectures were done.

After 3 months of nutritional education, there were a significant reduction in HbA1c % from 9.53 to 8.09 (P < 0.001) and body mass index from 32.19 to 31.58 (P = 0.001) and also slight but non-significant changes in cholesterol, LDL, triglyceride, and HDL (7.05 ± 38.428, 5.00 ± 29.858, 9.10 ± 85.386, 0.24 ± 3.612 respectively) (P = 0.253, 0.296, 0.668, and 0.504 respectively).

Nutritional education program is effective to decrease HbA1c % and body mass index.