Research suggests that eating a controlled diet that is high in fat and low in carbohydrate may help to repair kidney damage.
The results of research carried out by the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York published in the journal PLoS ONE show that diabetic mice that were fed this controlled diet were able to reverse the damage caused to their kidneys by too much sugar in the blood. The study used mice with both Type 1 and Type 2 diabetes, and once kidney damage had developed, half of the mice were put on the diet for eight weeks. After eight weeks of testing the kidney damage was reversed.
Questions remain however with regards to how sustainable this type of diet might be for humans, particularly as the 87% fat content mimics the effects of starvation.
In the UK around a third of the 2.8 million people with diabetes go on to develop kidney damage.
