I went on a medically-supervised, very low calorie and low carb (keto) diet after being diagnosed with diabetes. A few months and about 50lbs in, I had no signs of insulin resistance whatsoever, my A1C was down to completely normal values, and I was able to discontinue my medication entirely. That diagnosis, as hard as it was to hear, was one of the absolute best things to ever happen to me.
Same. Pre-diabetic and all kinds of other health issues started creeping up (obesity, GERD, really bad heartburn, sleep apnea, etc). Most doctors would've just had me take medications, wear a mask that would breathe for me while I slept, and put my bed at an angle so I could sleep through the heartburn/reflux.
Started calorie restricting and eliminated grains and sugar from my diet almost entirely, and all pre-diabetic symptoms disappeared within a month or two. Zero GERD, zero heartburn, no longer obese, no more disturbed sleep, lots of energy.
I think in most cases type 2 diabetes (and most symptoms associated with obesity, metabolic syndrome, etc) is a disease people inflict on themselves through poor diet. Particularly by eating refined carbohydrates (especially wheat and sugar) and being genetically predisposed to not metabolizing those very well.
The food industry spends a lot of money skewing the research on this and pushing people toward exercise so they can wash their hands of it all, and they have the cooperation of the USDA (just look at that ridiculous pyramid ffs). So you kind of just have to explore this diet on your own through a lot of noise and people telling you you're wrong. In my case it was an outright cure for a lot of health problems, and it didn't take very long to confirm that either. I don't read public health journals or articles about nutrition anymore.
What this article fails to mention is if the subjects need to remain on a restricted diet.
I'm a type II diabetic (my A1C was 8.7 when diagnosed) who is technically "cured" (my A1C ranges between 5.8 and 6.0), but my doctor said to me, "Make no mistake, the minute you go back to eating the way you used to, all the symptoms will return."
I don't take any medication, but I remain on my diet. And I never cheat.
I don't practice calorie restriction, but I follow my doctor's and nutritionist's guidelines: I avoid the four horsemen of the diabetic apocalypse (bread, rice, potatoes, pasta), no desserts, no dried fruit or fruit juice.
I dropped 10 lbs. when I changed my diet (I'm at 150 lbs. now), and I've never really felt the same sense of fullness as I did when I ate carbs. I'm mildly hungry all the time.
This happened to me as well. I was diagnosed about 5 years ago, and I thought for sure this was the beginning of a descent into my early death. But after about a week of moping, I got off my ass. I'm down about 90 pounds now, I've cut most of my sources of sugar and carbs, and I'm down to normal A1C values and off of medication. I also feel better than I ever have in my entire life. I wish that I could go back in time 20 years and tell my teenage self what was going to happen, and how he could turn it around so much earlier than I did, and with so much less effort and heartache along the way.
What does a "medically supervised" diet entail? You visit the doctor on a frequent basis and do it under their guidance?
Does this exist for non-diabetic patients? I recently had weight gain for the first time of my life after reaching 30yrs of age and always being underweight. I've been meaning to look into some diet-based approaches that would be supported by science, but Googling it has always been a deluge of pseudo-science.
Imagine that. How much more evidence will it take before Dr. Atkins is given the credit he is due for his work on low carb, low sugar diets and obesity/diabetes?
Kind of related: it's fun as a Type 1 Diabetic when people tell me that I should be able to manage my disease with just diet. Or when they get upset because I eat a bowl of ice cream or something (even though I bolused properly for the carbs).
It's really unfortunate that T1 and T2 diabetes have the same name, since they're completely different diseases that just happen to share some symptoms.
I was diagnosed as diabetic in my early 30s with an A1C of 13. I'm vegan and at the time weighed about 135 pounds (down from my normal weight of 165), ran 20-30 miles a week.
The doctors I saw immediately diagnosed me as Type 2 and treated with Metformin. Between that, starving myself, and exercising like a maniac I was able to keep my blood sugar roughly under control for another year or so.
Then everything really went to shit and additional tests were like, "Whoops, guess it was Type 1 after all."
With doctors having a hard time getting past their own biases and experience, it's no wonder the average person does, too.
I was diagnosed with type 2 about 4 years ago. I was 245 pounds. My daily fasting number was around 180. I was put on Metformin. Now, I am off the Metformin and down to about 180 pounds. Diet and exercise were key. I dont check my blood sugar anymore because my medical insurance doesn't cover the supplies. If I checked my sugar just twice a day it would run me almost $400 a month in supplies. $400 buys all of my food for the month.
But my dr mentioned to me that I might be leaking protein into my urine stream and that I need to lose even more weight and make my diet even more strict. If I continue to leak protein into my urine stream then I need to have my kidney and liver looked at. I already just eat vegetables and meat 90% of the time. I watch my sugar intake and I turn away anything with more than 1-2g of sugar per serving. I don't eat any treats except maybe an RxBar is I crave something sweet.
Can anyone explain if I could develop type 1 diabetes still?
“Diabetes” and even “Diabetes Mellitus” (the latter of which being what Type 1 and Type 2 are modifiers for) are originally just names of symptoms (essentially “frequent urination” and “frequent sweet-tasting urination" [17th century diagnostics were... interesting]) that got adopted with modifiers as disease names.
I guess it is an outcome of these things being names based on symptoms rather than causes.
Just look at cancer, depending on where it originates it can have a multitude of causes. But MSM is likely to report every new finding as just cancer, with zero details about the type involved.
It is quite funny the relationship between the two types of diabetes. The guy who fitted my kitchen was diabetic, but was at pains to point out that he had "proper diabetes, not fat bastard diabetes."
I'm a parent of a T1D and if I had a dollar for every time I've heard "My cousin cured his diabetes with diet!" I'd be a very rich man.
Or, and this may sound petty, but listening to someone equate their struggles as a type 2 with the struggle of a type 1 makes my blood boil. I would gladly swap my son's type 1 for type 2 any day of the week.
> ... total diet replacement (825–853 kcal/day formula diet for 3–5 months), stepped food reintroduction (2–8 weeks) ...
That sounds to me like participants were given a professionally prepared formula to consume instead of food, so the calorie counts might be that accurate.
It's tough not only to cut back the calories, but to pack needed nutrients into the few calories remaining. Over several months you could accidentally end up with a severe deficiency of something.
> Also, c'mon, a range of 825-853 calories? Nobody is counting calories that accurately and it would have been better to say "roughly 850 kCal per day".
That range might represent the precision of data they have for the formula mixture (if e.g. macronutrient data is only given to the nearest gram or half-gram and you consider the possible rounding error in both directions).
Probably something like Optifast. Kevin Smith (the filmmaker) dropped a ton of weight on it, and it was like 850 calories per day with weekly doctor checkins.
This reminds me that we had a cat that developed diabetes. Besides the usual treatment, we changed the cat's diet "radically". Eventually the cat no longer required insulin shots, i.e. it was "cured". I remarked to my wife at the time that maybe the reason T2 diabetes is considered incurable is that it's all but impossible to get humans to radically change their diet.
It's pretty common in cats for there to be a honeymoon period after treatment begins. The lower blood sugar levels allow the still viable ß cells to resume producing insulin.
After a time, however, the process that was killing them off in the first place often reappears and insulin is required again.
The biggest factor I've seen in previous cats with diabetes - dry vs wet food. Switch from free-feeding dry to measured, timed canned portions made a night/day difference.
Nice to see this hitting the mainstream. I vaguely recollect Robert Lustig of "Sugar: The Bitter Truth" [1] fame (or someone following/close to him) making a similar point a few years ago.
All systems of the body follow a circadian rhythm. Following the body’s circadian rhythm and adhering to a time-restricted eating pattern (i.e. intermittent fasting) is even more important than explicitly only restricting calories. Secondly, avoiding processed carbs and sugars is more important than explicitly only restricting calories. Combined, those two principles directly impact your insulin sensitivity, which is very influential in telling your body how to process the calories you eat, when to feel hungry/full, and to what degree.
Of course, by following a time-restricted eating pattern, you naturally consume less calories, but in general, calories are largely irrelevant when you are adhering to a consistent circadian eating cycle and eating clean, whole foods. Healthy insulin resistance directly negates fat/weight gain by telling your body to simply dispose of the excess energy rather than storing it as fat. Calories-wise, the body only uses what it needs and gets rid of the rest. To keep insulin resistance in a healthy range though, you obviously need to not consume things that will spike it and reverse the feedback loop. Following the body’s natural circadian rhythm contributes to keeping it in a healthy range as well, and it is significantly easier to adhere to than restricting calories only.
For the curious, here are a few resources that I have found super helpful in learning to better control my diet and health.
I think the headline is accurate because that is indeed what the study shows, since it compared a control group to a group on a very low calorie diet.
But I'd really like to know if this is any _more_ beneficial than more normal, gradual weight loss, like a 2000 calorie diet that gets you down to the same weight.
I have a hypothesis, though I haven't had a chance to dig through existing research to determine if it's an idea worth pursuing.
The basics of it are that there is a condition that has the same symptoms of type 2 diabetes, but isn't, and that "real" type 2 diabetes is a genetic defect that does not have as much of an impact as the type 1 defect. If correct you might say it's a nomenclature issue, which seems to happen from time to time in medicine.
If this hypothesis is correct, then people who are overweight and "cure" type 2 by losing weight are really just improving their health (which they should do). They never had diabetes to begin with. As I said before, I haven't done the research and only have anecdotal evidence from my own situation with diabetes. To elaborate, I've never been overweight and have always had fairly well balanced, low-sodium diet, yet was still diagnosed. Most men on my father's side of the family have been diagnosed with diabetes, so it seems genetics might come in to play. I manage my diabetes through diet, exercise, and medicine (not insulin).
I suppose the research I would like to see is a study of treatment controlled for the initial weight and lifestyles of the patients. If weight wasn't a factor to begin with, how did diagnoses take place and how did changes in diet and lifestyle affect it? I'm also curious of heart disease and kidney function actually correlates with diabetes only because of obesity (or in other words, actually only correlates with obesity).
Also, the article states, "Rather than addressing the root cause, management guidelines for type 2 diabetes focus on reducing blood sugar levels through drug treatments. Diet and lifestyle are touched upon, but diabetes remission by cutting calories is rarely discussed". Maybe that's true in the UK, but in my case, per doctor's orders I went to the diabetes control center and had a class on how to change my diet, which included meetings with a RN and registered dietitian who specializes in diabetes treatment.
Maybe I am repeating another comment, but... that's not something new. It's a well known thing (at least here, in Europe/Poland) that type 2 diabetes at early stage is mostly caused by bad lifestyle and can be easily reversed within few months.
The interesting thing here is what lifestyle is causing it/cures it.
In Denmark we call diabetes "sugar disease". I read a pamphlet from the The Diabetes Foundation where it said that it was 'a lifestyle disease' and made no connection with sugar or carbs. Rather, I got the impression it was still about reducing your weight, which has usually been a battle against fat contents. I asked my doctor about these statements and the connection with sugar, only to have him say "well, some studies make a connection but nothing official".
Which brings me back to the article. The point is the connection is becoming more clear: High carb diet (e.g. sugar) seems to trigger Type 2.
It's not news, but science is not about news - it's about rigorous testing to confirm our theory.
It is indeed so tiring to explain to people I'm not crazy skipping that dessert or pizza or pastry. Most of my peers still think bacon and butter are pure evil.
The way I found out that for example, sugar and meat are among my enemies, was avoiding one of them for days, and writing down how I felt. One thing easy to forget is how different our metabolism can be when compared with others. But you have to make an effort to avoid just that one type of food, and keep eating everything else as usual. Even better is to repeat the experiment various times. And write everything down, do not trust your memory.
I had a whole host of health problems before caloric restriction and cardio + weightlifting. High blood pressure, arthritis, and asthma all disappeared after an active lifestyle and CR.
I never took the Norvasc that was prescribed by my primary care doctor because my cardiologist told me I was too young to be taking any medications. Had an EKG and blood work and everything came back normal.
This is less about the diet and more about the weight loss.
Type 2 diabetes is basically overloading your body so your pancreas doesn't work effectively. Removing those stressors and improving insulin sensitivity allows your body to work normally.
You can achieve similar results from any diet that someone would stick to and lose a similar amount of weight.
About 4-5 years ago I was very unhealthy and experiencing symptoms of type-2 diabetes. It scared the hell out of me and I cut out all sugar and started running multiple miles per day.
The result was significant and I lost something on the order of 60-70 pounds. After that, all of my symptoms subsided.
[+] [-] daeken|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] throwaway0255|8 years ago|reply
Started calorie restricting and eliminated grains and sugar from my diet almost entirely, and all pre-diabetic symptoms disappeared within a month or two. Zero GERD, zero heartburn, no longer obese, no more disturbed sleep, lots of energy.
I think in most cases type 2 diabetes (and most symptoms associated with obesity, metabolic syndrome, etc) is a disease people inflict on themselves through poor diet. Particularly by eating refined carbohydrates (especially wheat and sugar) and being genetically predisposed to not metabolizing those very well.
The food industry spends a lot of money skewing the research on this and pushing people toward exercise so they can wash their hands of it all, and they have the cooperation of the USDA (just look at that ridiculous pyramid ffs). So you kind of just have to explore this diet on your own through a lot of noise and people telling you you're wrong. In my case it was an outright cure for a lot of health problems, and it didn't take very long to confirm that either. I don't read public health journals or articles about nutrition anymore.
[+] [-] brian_cunnie|8 years ago|reply
I'm a type II diabetic (my A1C was 8.7 when diagnosed) who is technically "cured" (my A1C ranges between 5.8 and 6.0), but my doctor said to me, "Make no mistake, the minute you go back to eating the way you used to, all the symptoms will return."
I don't take any medication, but I remain on my diet. And I never cheat.
I don't practice calorie restriction, but I follow my doctor's and nutritionist's guidelines: I avoid the four horsemen of the diabetic apocalypse (bread, rice, potatoes, pasta), no desserts, no dried fruit or fruit juice.
I dropped 10 lbs. when I changed my diet (I'm at 150 lbs. now), and I've never really felt the same sense of fullness as I did when I ate carbs. I'm mildly hungry all the time.
[+] [-] EdgarVerona|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dmix|8 years ago|reply
Does this exist for non-diabetic patients? I recently had weight gain for the first time of my life after reaching 30yrs of age and always being underweight. I've been meaning to look into some diet-based approaches that would be supported by science, but Googling it has always been a deluge of pseudo-science.
[+] [-] vijayr|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] simonebrunozzi|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fuzzfactor|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dtornabene|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] arkitaip|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] X86BSD|8 years ago|reply
Seriously.
[+] [-] superb_herb|8 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] _2dsr|8 years ago|reply
It's really unfortunate that T1 and T2 diabetes have the same name, since they're completely different diseases that just happen to share some symptoms.
[+] [-] paulcole|8 years ago|reply
The doctors I saw immediately diagnosed me as Type 2 and treated with Metformin. Between that, starving myself, and exercising like a maniac I was able to keep my blood sugar roughly under control for another year or so.
Then everything really went to shit and additional tests were like, "Whoops, guess it was Type 1 after all."
With doctors having a hard time getting past their own biases and experience, it's no wonder the average person does, too.
[+] [-] jason_slack|8 years ago|reply
But my dr mentioned to me that I might be leaking protein into my urine stream and that I need to lose even more weight and make my diet even more strict. If I continue to leak protein into my urine stream then I need to have my kidney and liver looked at. I already just eat vegetables and meat 90% of the time. I watch my sugar intake and I turn away anything with more than 1-2g of sugar per serving. I don't eat any treats except maybe an RxBar is I crave something sweet.
Can anyone explain if I could develop type 1 diabetes still?
[+] [-] dragonwriter|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] digi_owl|8 years ago|reply
Just look at cancer, depending on where it originates it can have a multitude of causes. But MSM is likely to report every new finding as just cancer, with zero details about the type involved.
[+] [-] gadders|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jawngee|8 years ago|reply
I'm a parent of a T1D and if I had a dollar for every time I've heard "My cousin cured his diabetes with diet!" I'd be a very rich man.
Or, and this may sound petty, but listening to someone equate their struggles as a type 2 with the struggle of a type 1 makes my blood boil. I would gladly swap my son's type 1 for type 2 any day of the week.
[+] [-] randlet|8 years ago|reply
That is going to be a brutal 3-5 months. Worth it in the end though.
Also, c'mon, a range of 825-853 calories? Nobody is counting calories that accurately and it would have been better to say "roughly 850 kCal per day".
[+] [-] leereeves|8 years ago|reply
> ... total diet replacement (825–853 kcal/day formula diet for 3–5 months), stepped food reintroduction (2–8 weeks) ...
That sounds to me like participants were given a professionally prepared formula to consume instead of food, so the calorie counts might be that accurate.
[+] [-] esalazar|8 years ago|reply
Total Cals - 836
Breakfast: 2 eggs - 156 calories
Lunch:
2 cups of spinach - 14 calories
1 cup of bell peppers - 39 calories
200 grams chicken breast - 226 calories
Snack:
1 banana - 105 calories
Dinner:
200 grams chicken breast - 226 calories
1 cup of broccoli - 31 calories
1 cup of bell peppers - 39 calories
[+] [-] sp332|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 0xcde4c3db|8 years ago|reply
That range might represent the precision of data they have for the formula mixture (if e.g. macronutrient data is only given to the nearest gram or half-gram and you consider the possible rounding error in both directions).
[+] [-] packetslave|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] agumonkey|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sridca|8 years ago|reply
https://www.crsociety.org
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calorie_restriction
[+] [-] dpratt71|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jhayward|8 years ago|reply
After a time, however, the process that was killing them off in the first place often reappears and insulin is required again.
The biggest factor I've seen in previous cats with diabetes - dry vs wet food. Switch from free-feeding dry to measured, timed canned portions made a night/day difference.
[+] [-] jzawodn|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ddebernardy|8 years ago|reply
[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM
[+] [-] holowire|8 years ago|reply
Of course, by following a time-restricted eating pattern, you naturally consume less calories, but in general, calories are largely irrelevant when you are adhering to a consistent circadian eating cycle and eating clean, whole foods. Healthy insulin resistance directly negates fat/weight gain by telling your body to simply dispose of the excess energy rather than storing it as fat. Calories-wise, the body only uses what it needs and gets rid of the rest. To keep insulin resistance in a healthy range though, you obviously need to not consume things that will spike it and reverse the feedback loop. Following the body’s natural circadian rhythm contributes to keeping it in a healthy range as well, and it is significantly easier to adhere to than restricting calories only.
For the curious, here are a few resources that I have found super helpful in learning to better control my diet and health.
The Obesity Code by Jason Fung, MD http://a.co/7MHTlmU
Found My Fitness Podcast with Dr. Rhonda Patrick https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/foundmyfitness/id8181983...
[+] [-] dharma1|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] grondilu|8 years ago|reply
People want easy solutions in forms of pills, and there is no money to gain from prescribing caloric restrictions.
[+] [-] fvrghl|8 years ago|reply
- That Sugar Film
- Fed Up (on netflix)
- Sugar Coated (on netflix)
[+] [-] devmunchies|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] francisofascii|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] JohnJamesRambo|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gjem97|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] adrianmonk|8 years ago|reply
But I'd really like to know if this is any _more_ beneficial than more normal, gradual weight loss, like a 2000 calorie diet that gets you down to the same weight.
[+] [-] nradov|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ubertakter|8 years ago|reply
The basics of it are that there is a condition that has the same symptoms of type 2 diabetes, but isn't, and that "real" type 2 diabetes is a genetic defect that does not have as much of an impact as the type 1 defect. If correct you might say it's a nomenclature issue, which seems to happen from time to time in medicine.
If this hypothesis is correct, then people who are overweight and "cure" type 2 by losing weight are really just improving their health (which they should do). They never had diabetes to begin with. As I said before, I haven't done the research and only have anecdotal evidence from my own situation with diabetes. To elaborate, I've never been overweight and have always had fairly well balanced, low-sodium diet, yet was still diagnosed. Most men on my father's side of the family have been diagnosed with diabetes, so it seems genetics might come in to play. I manage my diabetes through diet, exercise, and medicine (not insulin).
I suppose the research I would like to see is a study of treatment controlled for the initial weight and lifestyles of the patients. If weight wasn't a factor to begin with, how did diagnoses take place and how did changes in diet and lifestyle affect it? I'm also curious of heart disease and kidney function actually correlates with diabetes only because of obesity (or in other words, actually only correlates with obesity).
Also, the article states, "Rather than addressing the root cause, management guidelines for type 2 diabetes focus on reducing blood sugar levels through drug treatments. Diet and lifestyle are touched upon, but diabetes remission by cutting calories is rarely discussed". Maybe that's true in the UK, but in my case, per doctor's orders I went to the diabetes control center and had a class on how to change my diet, which included meetings with a RN and registered dietitian who specializes in diabetes treatment.
[+] [-] dzek|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] scarlac|8 years ago|reply
In Denmark we call diabetes "sugar disease". I read a pamphlet from the The Diabetes Foundation where it said that it was 'a lifestyle disease' and made no connection with sugar or carbs. Rather, I got the impression it was still about reducing your weight, which has usually been a battle against fat contents. I asked my doctor about these statements and the connection with sugar, only to have him say "well, some studies make a connection but nothing official".
Which brings me back to the article. The point is the connection is becoming more clear: High carb diet (e.g. sugar) seems to trigger Type 2.
It's not news, but science is not about news - it's about rigorous testing to confirm our theory.
[+] [-] makmanalp|8 years ago|reply
I wonder if there's also comorbidity of obesity and mental health troubles which is helped by both of these aside from the diet.
[+] [-] odiroot|8 years ago|reply
That's even skipping all the vegans.
[+] [-] lhuser123|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ShabbosGoy|8 years ago|reply
I had a whole host of health problems before caloric restriction and cardio + weightlifting. High blood pressure, arthritis, and asthma all disappeared after an active lifestyle and CR.
I never took the Norvasc that was prescribed by my primary care doctor because my cardiologist told me I was too young to be taking any medications. Had an EKG and blood work and everything came back normal.
[+] [-] joelrunyon|8 years ago|reply
Type 2 diabetes is basically overloading your body so your pancreas doesn't work effectively. Removing those stressors and improving insulin sensitivity allows your body to work normally.
You can achieve similar results from any diet that someone would stick to and lose a similar amount of weight.
[+] [-] nkcmr|8 years ago|reply
About 4-5 years ago I was very unhealthy and experiencing symptoms of type-2 diabetes. It scared the hell out of me and I cut out all sugar and started running multiple miles per day.
The result was significant and I lost something on the order of 60-70 pounds. After that, all of my symptoms subsided.