Research

Hormonal

A ketogenic diet (KD) improves glycemic control and insulin sensitivity in patients with Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus (T2DM) by reducing carbohydrate intake, lowering serum insulin, and enhancing fat catabolism.

For T2DM patients, adopting a ketogenic diet can significantly lower blood sugar and HbA1c levels compared to standard low-calorie diets. This is achieved by restricting carbohydrates, which lowers insulin levels and improves insulin sensitivity. However, medical supervision is critical, especially if you are taking insulin or SGLT2 inhibitors, to avoid dangerous side effects like hypoglycemia or ketoacidosis.

GoodSupportsHIGH confidence
With the premise of ensuring constant total calorie intake, the KD reduces carbohydrate intake, lowers serum insulin levels, increases insulin sensitivity, and enhances fat catabolism, thus reducing blood lipids.
Huiyuan Zhu et al. · Signal Transduction and Targeted Therapy · 2022

Why this rating

The paper cites multiple clinical studies, meta-analyses, and prospective studies showing significant HbA1c reduction and insulin sensitivity improvements.

Source

Ketogenic diet for human diseases: the underlying mechanisms and potential for clinical implementations

Huiyuan Zhu et al. · Signal Transduction and Targeted Therapy · 2022

DOI 10.1038/s41392-021-00831-w

narrative_reviewCited 379×
Read the paper
DOI resolved against Crossref · corpus check 2026-06-10

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