Cutting protein intake can help control metabolic syndrome and some of its main symptoms, such as obesity, diabetes and high blood pressure (hypertension), according to a study conducted by researchers in Brazil and Denmark to compare the effects of protein and calorie restriction diets in humans. An article reporting the study is published in the journal Nutrients.
Metabolic syndrome is a cluster of conditions that heighten the risk of cardiovascular disease, stroke and diabetes, including hypertension, high blood sugar, excess body fat around the waist and abnormal cholesterol levels.
"The study showed that cutting protein intake to 0.8 g per kg of body weight was sufficient to achieve almost the same clinical results as restricting calories, but without the need to reduce calorie intake. The results suggest that protein restriction may be one of the key factors leading to the known benefits of dietary restriction. Protein restriction dieting may therefore be a more attractive nutritional strategy and easier to follow for people with metabolic syndrome," said Rafael Ferraz-Bannitz, first author of the article and currently a postdoctoral researcher at the Joslin Diabetes Center in Harvard Medical School in the United States.
The study was funded by FAPESP via a PhD scholarship awarded to Ferraz-Bannitz while he was attending the University of São Paulo's Ribeirão Preto Medical School (FMRP-USP) in Brazil. The study also benefited from a FAPESP Thematic Project on strategies for mimicking the effects of dietary restriction, led by Marcelo Mori, a professor at the State University of Campinas (UNICAMP), also in Brazil.
A multidisciplinary team of scientists conducted the study, including researchers affiliated with the University of Copenhagen in Denmark, and the University of São Paulo and the National Cancer Institute (INCA) in Brazil, as well as the Obesity and Comorbidities Research Center (OCRC), a Research, Innovation and Dissemination Center (RIDC) funded by FAPESP and hosted by UNICAMP.
Controlled diet
In the study, 21 volunteers with metabolic syndrome were analyzed for a period of 27…
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