Main difference between the vegan approach to diabetes control and the natural omnivores approach is that the vegan approach uses foods have a glycemic load of 0-20, the natural omnivores 0-9.
It's important the we understand what glycemic load (GL)is and how it differs from the more commonly used term, glycemic index (GI). GI is a measure of the degree to which a carbohydrate is likely to raise your blood sugar. GL measures the amount of available carbohydrates in a typical serving of a food AND the GI of the food.
Glycemic Load is a more accurate measure of a foods effect on blood sugar levels and here is why.
Take a carrot as an example, a food with a high GI but low GL. 7% of a carrot is made up of useable carbohydrates. A 50g carbohydrate content is employed as the standard measure for a GI rating of individual foods to show how fast blood sugar level are raised. You need to eat 1.5 lbs of carrots to get 50 grams of carbohydrates and nobody eats this many carrots in one siting.
So GI rating often overstates relatively small carbohydrate content in a food item like a carrot.
The reverse is also true, i.e. the glycemic effects of foods containing a high percentage of carbs like spaghetti which has a low GI but high GL. This is due to the fact that almost nobody eats 200 calories (50 grams) of spaghetti in a sitting, the average portion size is 2-3x this.
The vegan diet works because it bring a persons blood sugar levels to the range accepted by the American Diabetes Association, between 70-130 mg/dl. This number actually depends on whether or not the person is experiencing low blood glucose symptoms. A person with no symptoms can have higher BSL.
The natural omnivores diet will bring blood sugar levels below 100
So diabetes is "cured" even if the person has a BSL between 100-130 but the quest for optimum health wants our blood sugar under 100, ideally in the mid 80's.
The vegan diet has a greater effect on a person depending on how overweight they are. The more overweight a person is the more dramatic of a shift they will have in all of the measurable bio-markers when making the shift from SAD to vegan.
The vegan diet has less of an effect on a person who needs to lose smaller amounts of weight. Females trying to lose 5-10 lbs/Males trying to lose 10-15 lbs will struggle to lose these pounds because of the lowfat- high-carbohydrate nature of the vegan diet.
An important but lesser known biomarker for future health conditions is our A1c levels. A1c levels are a measure of our daily blood sugar levels over a period of time, usually 3-4 months. It is generally accepted that an A1c level of 5.6-5.8 indicates that the person has good control over their diabetes. A vegan diet will do a great job of bringing A1c levels down to this 5.6-5.8 range but the newest science says that we should have our A1c levels below 5.2 if we want to have optimum health. There is some interesting research that also says that having an A1c levels of 5.6-5.8 puts us in the higher categories of risk for cancer, dementia and brain shrinkage.
The 2 main advocates of the vegan diet for diabetes control both say that eating saturated fats found in animal products causes insulin resistance but this turns out to be based more on their own personal agendas (don't eat meat!) than an awareness of the newest studies done on saturated fats. While eating protein does effect our blood sugar levels all animal foods have glycemic loads of near 0. This means that eating animal flesh has very little to no effect on our blood sugar and insulin. levels. As it turns out we were wrong about red meat and saturated fat in particular. Modern science is determining that saturated fats are healthy fats and a necessary part of achieving robust health. This is not a dialogue on lowfat vs hi-fat. This is already old news and as you can see one of my source links is from a systematic review and meta-analysis of these kind of studies.
I look at diabetes as a spectrum disorder and the diagnosis of diabetes and level of diabetes depends on measurable bio markers (blood sugar levels, insulin levels, A1c levels) as well as whether or not the person is experiencing diabetic symptoms (excess bodyfat, headaches, poor sleep, daytime lethargy, poor mood and allergy like symptoms such as sinus problems).
Whether or not you chose to pursue the vegan diet as a method of controlling diabetes depends on your goals. If you have very high goals, lets say being very lean and muscular the vegan diet will be challenging due to its high-carbohydrate content. If you have moderate goals and don't mind a little bellyfat and are feeling well with your blood sugar levels between 100-130 then the vegan diet is a great approach to manage and control diabetic symptoms.
http://diabetesmanagement.insulitelabs.com/glycemic_index.php
http://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/diabetes/expert-blog/blood-glucose-target-range/bgp-20056575
http://chriskresser.com/how-to-prevent-diabetes-and-heart-disease-for-16
http://www.nealbarnard.org/books/diabetes/
http://www.drmcdougall.com/misc/2009nl/dec/diabetes.htm
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2885952/
http://www.drperlmutter.com/important-blood-test/
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