A balanced diet helps a person to control high risk Type 2 diabetes better than what medications can achieve solely.

Lead author Kirsten Coppell of the University of Otago said that the study indicates that offering up the accurate dietary advice could help diabetes sufferers ward off the disease's disturbing complications.

Proper diet for diabetes patients consists of whole grains for carbohydrates, brown rice, lots of protein-rich foods, meat, monounsaturated fats.

Results from the 6-month lifestyle intervention trial comprising New Zealand patients with poorly controlled diabetes were reported in the British Medical Journal.

Coppell stated that assuring diabetes sufferers can preserve satisfactory control over their blood sugar levels is vital in avoiding long-term complications like kidney failure, heart disease, gangrene and blindness, according to a university release.

"The patients in our study were already under intensive drug treatment to optimise their glycaemic control (regulation of blood glucose), which remained unsatisfactory. We found that by following carefully tailored dietary advice they could significantly improve this control," Coppell said. (With Inputs from Agencies)