Diet-Related Knowledge and Physical Activity in a Large Cohort of Insulin-Treated Type 2 Diabetes Patients: PROGENS ARENA Study

Abstract

There is no doubt that behavioral intervention is crucial for type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) prevention and management. We aimed to estimate dietary habits and diet-oriented knowledge as well as the level of physical activity in 2500 insulin-treated Polish type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) patients (55.4% women). The mean age of the study participants was 64.9 ± 9.3 years, mean BMI was 31.4 kg/m2 ± 4.5, mean diabetes duration was 12.4 ± 6.9 years, and mean baseline HbA1c was 8.5% ± 1.2. At the study onset, all the patients completed a questionnaire concerning health-oriented behavior. Results showed a significant lack of diet-related knowledge. For example, only 37.5% recognized that buckwheat contains carbohydrates; the percentage of correct answers in questions about fruit drinks and pasta was 56.4% and 61.2%, respectively. As for the physical activity, only 57.4% of examined T2DM patients declared any form of deliberate physical activity. To conclude, the cohort of poorly controlled insulin-treated T2DM patients studied by us is characterized by insufficient diet-related knowledge and by a very low level of physical activity. Further studies on other populations of insulin-treated T2DM patients are required to confirm these findings.

Nutrition-related knowledge and its determinants in middle-aged and older patients with type 2 diabetes

“…Studies conducted in T2D patients in other countries focused on other issues beyond nutrition-related knowledge (for example: glycemic control, diabetes complications, physical activity, etc.) and used different evaluation methods: group interviews [8,12] and questionnaires evaluating diabetes knowledge [5,10,11,[13][14][15]. We just found one study that specifically assessed nutrition-related knowledge in T2D patients, using a 25-item nutrition knowledge scale designed for a community of Hispanics living in United States [9].…”

“…Although some studies conducted in T2D patients had found deficits in nutrition-related knowledge [5,[8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15], most of them were conducted in countries outside Europe [8][9][10]12,14,15] and only two were conducted in Western Europe [5,13]. Furthermore, few studies have analyzed the determinants of nutrition-related knowledge in T2D patients [9,11,14,15] and most of them only focused on educational level. To our knowledge, this is the first study in Portugal that focused on these two issues.…”

A need-based approach to self-management education for adults with co-morbid diabetes and chronic kidney disease

“…Possible reasons include that currently available self-management education resources may exist in forms that are too hard to understand [25–27] and/or that patients [28, 29] lack of co-ownership of the education resources. There may also be poor acquisition and retention of self-management education especially in the sub-theme of nutrition and lifestyle as previously reported in patients with diabetes [30–32]. We expected that patients with a longer duration of diabetes would have lessor education needs regarding diet compared to those with recent diagnoses of diabetes.…”

Efficacy, Safety, and Quality of Treatment Satisfaction of Premixed Human and Analogue Insulin Regimens in a Large Cohort of Type 2 Diabetic Patients: PROGENS BENEFIT Observational Study

“…Maintaining, however, not reducing BMI is in accordance with other observational study performed among Polish cohort of patients treated with biphasic human insulin [ 26 ]. Besides insulin therapy, patients were given support related to behavioral treatment of the disease, which is of extreme importance since it was proven in another large cohort of Polish patients with type 2 diabetes that their diet-related knowledge is insufficient and their physical activities are very low [ 27 ]. Both premixed insulin analogues and premixed human regimens were significantly effective in terms of HbA1c reduction; however, patients treated with insulin analogue obtained significantly better results in terms of reduction of both FPG, PPG, and HbA1c values.…”