Crash course diet reverses Type 2 diabetes in a week

Thursday, May 7th, 2015

Until recently, received medical wisdom was that Type 2 diabetes was largely irreversible, but a new study shows that a crash-course diet can reverse Type 2 diabetes in a week:

Prof Taylor asked 11 volunteers, all recently diagnosed, to go on what he admitted was an “extreme diet” of specially formulated drinks and non-starchy vegetables, for eight weeks.

After just a week, pre-breakfast (‘fasting’) blood sugar levels had returned to normal, suggesting a resumption of correct pancreas function.

After eight weeks, all had managed to reverse their diabetes. Three months on, seven remained free of it.

Prof Taylor explained that too much fat “clogged up” the operation of the pancreas at a cellular level, preventing normal secretion of insulin which regulates blood sugar.

When this fat was removed — by way of the diet — normal function resumed.

[...]

The idea of the crash diet came from the observation that gastric bypass patients often quickly stopped being Type 2 diabetics.

Many thought this was because surgery affected gut hormones which had a knock-on impact on the pancreas.

But Prof Taylor thought it might really be because the surgery severely constrained what patients could eat. He set up the diet experiment to test his ‘fat’ hypothesis.

He said special MRI scans showed the proportion of fat in volunteers’ pancreases dropped during the eight weeks, from eight to six per cent.
“This study does not just show proof of principal, it shows proof of mechanism,” he concluded.

[...]

Despite the diet’s potential, Prof Taylor was a little pessimistic about how many would stick to it.

“Maybe five per cent,” he said. “However, if they did, it would save the NHS many millions of pounds.”

Almost a tenth of the entire NHS budget, or about £9 billion a year, is spent managing diabetes and its complications. Most of that is spent on type 2 diabetics, who outnumber type 1 diabetics by about nine to one.

(Hat tip to P.D. Mangan.)

Comments

  1. Type 2 Guy says:

    This is both true and misleading at the same time. I was diagnosed with Type 2 and took medications to control my Blood Sugar levels. Simply put; your pancreas is not efficiently supplying enough insulin to control your blood sugar by itself at your normal calorie consumption level.

    Decreasing calorie intake, notably simple carbs, will lessen the need for insulin to balance the spike of blood sugar from those carbs. By continuosly monitoring my blood glucose levels, I could determine what effect different foods caused.

    I went on a clinical low calorie diet (900 cal/day) and was able to eliminate my medications within 10 days. This is the same diet they put people on prior to gastric bypass surgery. I have no expertise in this field, but it would seem possible to me that these results could be from something as simple as the pancreas is not being subjected to the same workload in terms of insulin production.

    The diet suggested however, is pretty restrictive and needs to be done under medical supervision. A diet that low in calories will cause weight loss and transitioning back to a maintenance level (900 up to 2000+) eventually could trigger a return to the requirement for diabetes medications.

  2. Space Nookie says:

    Yeah, that’s what they did in this study — the diet was 600 cals/day for 8 weeks. I’m guessing the average participant lost about 30 pounds. I feel like this article includes claims that aren’t actually supported by the study. e.g. fat loss in the pancreas when there is loss of total body fat is what would be expected and is not IMO proof of the theory that pancreatic fat accumulation causes diabetes.

    This was a 2011 study/article so I looked around for confirmations — the same doctor is doing a larger study that will conclude in 2018.

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