NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Diets lean on meat and rich in healthy fats like olive oil were most effective at promoting weight loss and lowering blood sugar among people with diabetes in a review of evidence from the last 10 years.

Benefits were also seen with diets low in carbohydrates, high in protein or low in simple sugars.

"If you look at different types of diets, these four can improve various aspects of diabetes control," lead author Dr. Olubukola Ajala, a diabetes specialist at Western Sussex Hospitals in the UK, told Reuters Health.

More than 24 million Americans have type 2 diabetes. People with the disease cannot store glucose in their cells effectively, and their blood sugar levels can go dangerously high. Lifestyle changes like weight loss and cutting calorie intake can improve blood sugar control and reduce the risk of complications from the disease, but it has not been clear which diet plans work best.

Ajala and her colleagues reviewed the results of 20 studies comparing the effect of seven popular diets on adults with type 2 diabetes. Mediterranean diets, low-carb diets, high-protein diets and low glycemic index diets - which rank foods by how quickly their carbs turn into glucose - all lowered participants' blood sugar.

After following the diet for at least six months, the people on a Mediterranean eating plan also lost an average of 4 pounds. No other diet had a significant impact on weight, according to the findings published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

"We were quite surprised by the Mediterranean diet in particular," Ajala said. "I would have thought that low-carb would have been the best for losing weight, but Mediterranean seems to be better."

A Mediterranean-style diet emphasizes fruits, vegetables and legumes, whole grains, fish, and using olive oil and herbs in place of butter and salt. Saturated fats from red meat and dairy products are typically less than eight percent of total calories consumed.

Other studies have linked Mediterranean diets with reduced risks of cancer, Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease and death from heart attack (see Reuters Health story of November 25, 2011:).

Though the review found no evidence that vegetarian, vegan or high-fiber diets aided in weight loss, they might still have promise for improving blood sugar control, the report notes.

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Mediterranean diet may be best for diabetes

Mixing alcohol with diet drinks can increase intoxication, U.S. researchers are warning consumers.

Drinking on a empty stomach is well known to reduce alcohol concentrations. How diet drinks containing artificial sweeteners raise risk of intoxication hasn't been explored to same degree, despite the greater potential for impaired driving.

When researchers had 16 men and women come to a lab three times for different doses of vodka, sweetened and diet pop or a placebo in a random order, they found that consuming alcohol with a diet mixer resulted in 18 per cent higher breath alcohol concentration compared with having the same amount with a sweetened mixer.

"Many people probably chose to mix their alcohol with diet mixers, because they're concerned about the number of calories they're consuming," study author Cecile Marczinski of Northern Kentucky University in Heighland Heights, Ky., said in an interview with CBC News.

"But really having a higher blood alcohol concentration is much more harmful to your body," in terms of potential damage of the brain, liver and risk for alcoholism.

For the study published in this week's online issue of the journal Alcoholism Clinical and Experimental Research, Marczinski and colleague Amy Stamates measured the volunteers' breath alcohol concentrations and had them do computerized tests measuring response time and error rates like those of a driver who has decide to hit the gas or brake, they also found higher rates of impairment with the diet mixers.

"What I think is going on is that the stomach recognizes a sugary drink a bit like food. There's something to digest," Marczinski said. In contrast, the researchers suspect the diet mixers get through the stomach faster so blood alcohol spikes faster like drinking without having something to eat.

"Sugar slows things down."

The researchers said while the peak alcohol concentrations were above the 0.08 legal limit for driving, willingness to drive ratings didn't differ between the alcohol and placebo groups. Participants appeared unaware of the differences in breath alcohol.

"The elevation in breath alcohol concentration associated with diet mixers warrants greater consideration and consumers should be made aware of this phenomenon," the study's authors concluded.

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Mixing diet drinks with alcohol adds to impairment

The simple choice of whether or not to mix liquor with a diet or regular soda may affect how intoxicated you get, a new study suggests.

In the study, men and women ages 21 to 33 who drank vodka mixed withdiet sodahad breath alcohol concentrations that were 18 percent higher after 40 minutes compared with people who drank the same dose of vodka mixed with regular soda.

In fact, after three to four drinks, people who used diet soda as a mixer had a breath alcohol level that exceeded the legal limit for an adult operating a motor vehicle. People who used regular soda in their drink did not.

What's more, people who used diet mixers scored more poorly on a test of reaction time that people who used regular mixers, although both groups reported feeling similar levels of intoxication.

The study was small just eight men and eight women participated so more research is needed to confirm the findings. And although results from breath alcohol tests are usually consistent with those from tests of blood alcohol, there can sometimes be a discrepancy between the two methods, so the study should be replicated using blood alcohol tests, the researchers said.

But the findings suggest that diet mixers, althoughlower in calories, may have insidious effects, said study researcher Cecile Marczinski, an assistant professor of psychology at Northern Kentucky University.

People "think they're saving some calories by drinking their alcohol with a diet drink, [but] it's much more harmful to the body to have a high blood alcohol concentration," Marczinski said.

During the study, the 16 participants came into the laboratory three times, and received either vodka mixed with Squirt, vodka mixed with diet Squirt, or a placebo (Squirt containing a very small dose of alcohol to mimic the appearance and smell of an alcoholic beverage.) Besides the placebo, each drink contained equal amounts of alcohol and mixer. Thedose of alcoholin each individual drink was based on the participant's body weight.

Regular mixers may slow down the time it takes a person to become intoxicated from drinking, the researchers said. Alcohol is absorbed by the body when it reaches the small intestine. But the stomach may treat the sugar in regular mixers as if it were food. As a result, the alcohol doesn't reach the small intestine as quickly, Marczinski said.

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Diet or regular? Type of alcohol mixer affects intoxication

The simple choice of whether or not to mix liquor with a diet or regular soda may affect how intoxicated you get, a new study suggests.

In the study, men and women ages 21 to 33 who drank vodka mixed with diet soda had breath alcohol concentrations that were 18 percent higher after 40 minutes compared with people who drank the same dose of vodka mixed with regular soda.

In fact, after three to four drinks, people who used diet soda as a mixer had a breath alcohol level that exceeded the legal limit for an adult operating a motor vehicle. People who used regular soda in their drink did not.

What's more, people who used diet mixers scored more poorly on a test of reaction time that people who used regular mixers, although both groups reported feeling similar levels of intoxication.

The study was small just eight men and eight women participated so more research is needed to confirm the findings. And although results from breath alcohol tests are usually consistent with those from tests of blood alcohol, there can sometimes be a discrepancy between the two methods, so the study should be replicated using blood alcohol tests, the researchers said.

But the findings suggest that diet mixers, although lower in calories, may have insidious effects, said study researcher Cecile Marczinski, an assistant professor of psychology at Northern Kentucky University.

People "think they're saving some calories by drinking their alcohol with a diet drink, [but] it's much more harmful to the body to have a high blood alcohol concentration," Marczinski said.

During the study, the 16 participants came into the laboratory three times, and received either vodka mixed with Squirt, vodka mixed with diet Squirt, or a placebo (Squirt containing a very small dose of alcohol to mimic the appearance and smell of an alcoholic beverage.) Besides the placebo, each drink contained equal amounts of alcohol and mixer. The dose of alcohol in each individual drink was based on the participant's body weight.

Regular mixers may slow down the time it takes a person to become intoxicated from drinking, the researchers said. Alcohol is absorbed by the body when it reaches the small intestine. But the stomach may treat the sugar in regular mixers as if it were food. As a result, the alcohol doesn't reach the small intestine as quickly, Marczinski said. The artificial sweeteners in diet soda, on the other hand, may not delay stomach emptying, so the alcohol travels straight through to the small intestine, Marczinski added. An earlier study found that men who drank vodka mixed with a diet beverage had higher blood alcohol levels than men who drank vodka mixed with a regular beverage. Using an ultrasound, the researchers showed that the regular drink delayed stomach emptying, but the diet drink did not.

The new finding "helps people to make an informed decision" about the mixer they chose for their alcohol, said Emma Childs, an assistant professor in the University of Chicago's Department of Psychiatry, who has researched the effects of alcohol on physiology and behavior, and was not involved in the study.

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Diet or Regular? Choice of Alcohol Mixer Affects Intoxication

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Diet mixers can make you more drunk than higher-calorie options.

A new study, to be publishedin a forthcoming issue of Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research, found that using diet soda as a mixer can dramatically increase breath-alcohol content (BAC) without increasing your awareness of being impaired.

The study, which compared Smirnoff Red Label plus Squirt (a lemon-lime soda with no caffeine) with the vodka with Diet Squirt, found that the diet cocktail increased BAC by 18%. Thats almost as much as having an additional standard drink and was enough to tip people from being under the legal limit for driving to being unsafe to drive.

One of the key things we found was that even though BAC peaked 18% higher in the diet condition, [participants] didnt feel any more intoxicated and they didnt feel any different as to how willing they were to drive a car, says the studys lead author Cecile Marczinski, who is an assistant professor of psychology at Northern Kentucky University.

(MORE: Why Women Drink and Drive)

The study involved 16 young men and women who consider themselves to be social drinkers. Over the course of three different drinking sessions, they were given either a placebo drink, a diet Squirt with vodka, or a full-sugar Squirt with vodka. Researchers decided to test a noncaffeinated diet drink because although caffeine doesnt affect breath-detectable levels of alcohol, it does affect whether people think they are intoxicated so would have made the results more difficult to interpret. The dose of vodka was calibrated to each participants weight and gender to put them close to the .08 legal limit for drinking, which is the equivalent of drinking four beers in an hour.

After drinking the cocktail they were assigned, participants were tested for their reaction time and the number of errors they made in a computer task in which they learned a response and then had to inhibit that reaction on cue. They were also asked about their perceptions of how drunk and tired they were and whether they felt they could safely drive. At all times, the amount of alcohol measured in the volunteers breath was higher among those whose cocktails included diet drinks. And while the participants never reached the legal limit when they drank sugared soda with alcohol, they exceeded the safe limit for driving within 40 minutes if they had the diet cocktail.

(MORE: Study: Men and Women Benefit in Different Ways from AA)

They are more impaired on the computer task, measured both by reaction time and errors, Marczinski says of those in the diet-drink group. You shouldnt trust your own judgment of impairment. In one case, the subjects were safe to drive and legal, and in the other case, they were not, but they had no idea.

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Diet Mixers May Make You Drunker