Posted on 02/16/2025 2:43:15 PM PST by ConservativeMind
Research shows that most cases of type 2 diabetes can be prevented through lifestyle interventions. But if you already have the condition, can it be reversed?
The answer is a resounding yes, according to Gerald I. Shulman, MD, Ph.D.
Insulin resistance drives type 2 diabetes, Shulman explains. "If you reverse insulin resistance, you reverse type 2 diabetes," he said. In a landmark study, Shulman and Kitt Petersen, MD showed that modest weight reduction—even as little as 10%—does just that.
However, Shulman notes, many people who are initially successful at losing weight regain it. The novel anti-obesity GLP-1 medications can play an important role in helping people maintain this weight loss over the long term, he said.
Patricia Peter, MD echoes the importance of addressing insulin resistance.
"The best way to reverse type 2 diabetes is to decrease your body's resistance to the actions of the insulin made by the pancreas," she said.
"For most people, this means trying to attain a healthy weight, exercising regularly, and minimizing sugars and excessive carbohydrates in your diet."
"Over time, high levels of sugar in the blood can damage your vision, nerves, heart and kidney function," Peter said. "Thus, the sooner you can get your blood sugars back into the normal range by addressing or reversing diabetes, the less damage that high blood sugar can do."
Shulman pointed to studies that show a decrease in well-established complications of diabetes, such as blindness, end-stage kidney disease, and non-traumatic loss of limbs, when diabetes is treated.
Even better than treating type 2 diabetes is focusing on what drives it, Shulman added. "In reversing insulin resistance, we not only reverse type 2 diabetes but also prevent heart disease, fatty liver disease, obesity-associated cancers, and Alzheimer's disease, among many other problems that insulin resistance leads to," he said.
(Excerpt) Read more at medicalxpress.com ...
A separate study about six years ago showed four days of a fast-mimicking diet (based on fat for the few calories involved) caused beta cells in the pancreas to regenerate. I will post that in a following response
Here is the fasting study:
Fasting-mimicking diet promotes Ngn3-driven β-cell regeneration to reverse diabetes
https://www.cell.com/fulltext/S0092-8674(17)30130-7
For later.
And thanks ConservativeMind for the post!
Your excellent options:
1. Go blind from diabetes
2. Go blind from GLP-1 medications
Better to lose that 10% body weight. For me, that’s 20 pounds which has been so very hard to shed.
This one simple trick cures everything ,,,
BKMRK.
Well, I’ve been on GLP1, meds for a year and a half. Have lost 70 pounds. Haven’t gone blind, I get it through a compound pharmacy, so it runs about 400/month. No longer on blood pressure medicine, and cholesterol numbers have improved.
The natural health community has been saying that for years.
I suspect that they’re trying to beat RFK Jr to the punch.
Those sound like wonderful results! Congratulations. Do you think you can change your habits to get off the GLP1 meds? Or will it be a long-term commitment?
My clinic is running a session on weight loss and GLP1 in the next month or so which I will be attending.
My problem is simple — not enough exercise and too much eating. But I always seem to hit stasis at about 20 pounds over my ideal body weight.
Duh.
However, the correct answer is “Yes, but…”
DM2 here.12/2023 weighed 200, high carb diet , A1C of 9.
Diet and reasonable exercise got A1C down to 5.7 in six months.I have maintained it so I know DM2 can be controlled, but reversed not quite sure.
**1. Go blind from diabetes
2. Go blind from GLP-1 medications**
Don’t forget #3.
Harry Palmz? Or Big Bolz?
In my Dad’s case, the Diabetes affected his kidney’s. He was on dialysis before he died.
Ping
I am finding that the reversing takes as much time as it does to die.
I should be cured in about 20 years when I’m likely dead.
I’ll fight like heck with fasting and low carb.
I’m much better than I was 6 months ago...that’s really the attitude you have to take.
If diagnosed as “pre-diabetic” act NOW because you really ARE diabetic.
That is how you can reverse it.
I’m managing an A1c of 7 right now.
6 months back I was dying at 9.4.
Lost 20 lbs and it made a heck of a difference.
I came to accept that living was better than eating whatever I want all the time.
Also discovered that I don’t starve to death by not eating.
Oh, an important note is you need to go cold turkey on your diabetic meds when you fast....most meds only make the insulin resistance worse and lock your fat cells against being burned for fuel.
I stopped all meds tor a month.
My doctor thought I was nuts for doing this on my own without the meds.
They don’t know much really.
So the weight comes down BUTT when the sugars are creeping up you can take a much smaller dosage of your meds when you see that your body is not burning glucose because your reading are up.
Do the least dosages of your meds that you can.
Don’t tell your doctor so that he does not cut back your meds because we all want to hoard meds for WW3 of corse.
Diabetes Type2 PING
My A1C was 7.1. Began to eat better. Lost 30-35 lbs.
Cut sugar a lot. Lowered carbs. More fish. I’ve come to enjoy sardines.
No real exercise beyond my job.
Daily dose of Field of Greens vegetable powder.
At last check I was 5.2.
This is a manageable disease, thank God.
Diagnosed at 12.0 A1c at 260 pounds at 54 years old. Was put on metformin, glipizide and mounjaro, and told to cut carbs to as low as I could handle. Was given two weeks to show progress on CGM or I would be started on insulin.
Within two weeks the low carb and drugs had me averaging under 110 on the meter, so insulin avoided.
Next six months, dropped 75 pounds and A1c to 4.8.
Am off all drugs except maintenance dose of mounjaro, holding carbs still about 75 grams a day or less. Most days my meter never goes over 100.
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