Mediterranean diet, walking outdoors and polypharmacy in older patients with type II diabetes

Polypharmacy and its adverse health effects is an emerging public health issue, with increasing prevalence among patients with multiple chronic conditions, such as older adults with diabetes. A healthy lifestyle has been shown to improve both diabetes and polypharmacy incidence. We conducted a cross-sectional study to investigate the association of a healthy lifestyle with polypharmacy and comorbidities in older people with diabetes.

All out-patients from January 2013 to June 2015 with type II diabetes aged 65 years or more from a Lazio Region reference centre for diabetes were included in the study. Socio-demographic, clinical and lifestyle data were collected from medical records and through face-to-face standardized questionnaires. The comorbidity-polypharmacy score (CPS) was used to characterize the overall patients' frailty, by assessing concurrently the presence of comorbidities and polypharmacy. The cumulative logit model was used to estimate odds ratios (ORs) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs).

Adjusted ORs for age, sex, body mass index, physical activity and cognitive status, showed that CPS score was inversely related to weekly consumption of cruciferous vegetables (OR: 0.56, 95% CI: 0.35-0.90; P-trend = 0.015), leafy green vegetables (OR: 0.54, 95% CI: 0.33-0.87; P-trend = 0.013) and daily intake of fruits (OR: 0.63, 95% CI: 0.41-0.97; P-trend = 0.036). Walking outdoors was found inversely related to CPS score (age- and sex-adjusted OR: 0.60, 95% CI: 0.42-0.86).

Our findings suggest that eating some dietary factors present in the Mediterranean diet and walking outdoors regularly is associated with a lower intensity of medicines need to treat comorbidities among older people with diabetes.