Nutritional treatment of diabetes mellitus focusing in the fibres as dietary components

Diabetes mellitus (DM) is a disease that figures as a public problem around the world. It can arise from metabolic or acquired genetic conditions, besides from drug-induced genetic conditions, as well as malnutrition. Its symptoms are related to hyperglycemia or accumulation of glucose in many tissues. Nutritional treatment is necessary for those people, once it can decrease associated risks and complications and it is able to restore the expectation for a normal life. Fibres appears as an important dietary component because of the relation between structural and chemical\physical properties, which determines the nutritional effect and functional properties for DM treatment and the reduction of glycemic index of the meals. Because, for example, there is the necessity of suitable meals to the improvement of the life quality of diabetic individuals, we aimed to present the fibres as an important dietary component to treat DM. The study concerns to a bibliographic review realized by students of Nutrition from Federal University of Alagoas (UFAL-Brazil) to introduce the knowledge about new methods of prevention and treatment of DM. There are evidences that soluble fibres have shown good results in decreasing the glycemic index of food and decreasing the absorption of cholesterol, highlighting its relevance for treating the disease. Considering all those data, we can conclude that fibres seems to present important physiological effects to diabetic people;  it owns to the nutritionist to get the knowledge of all those points to obtain a better dietary manipulation.