A healthy diet, regular exercise, and culturally sensitive care may be helpful in preventing and controlling diabetes, say researchers.

The findings are based on recent reviews that suggest that a healthy diet and exercise can help prevent diabetes, and that patients from ethnic minorities do better with diabetes education that takes their language and culture into account.

Dr. Didac Mauricio, a researcher from the Hospital Universitari Arnau de Vilanova in Spain, said that the data from a review of eight studies showed that lower fat and higher fibre diets, combined with moderate weekly exercise, reduced the relative risk of developing type 2 diabetes by 37 per cent among the 2,241 study participants who had received the diet and exercise prescription.

The researcher said that people who participated in the studies also lost weight, reduced their waist circumference, and improved their blood pressure - all key factors related to the risk of developing diabetes.

Mauricio, however, said that the participants had substantial help from dieticians and exercise physiologists along the way, and because the changes in diet and exercise were monitored so carefully, "we do not presently know how these interventions perform outside a trial."

In another review by Lucie Nield of the University of Teesside and colleagues in England, diets rich in fruits and vegetables and lower in sugar were found to reduce the incidence of type 2 diabetes among the participants in one six-year study by 33 per cent.