Can diabetes be cured?
Posted on 15 April 2009
Published April 15, 2009 . Filed under: Diabetes/Metabolic Syndrome, Food and Medical Politics, Healthy Eating, Unhealthy Eating!
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I had a good laugh when I read
April 15, 2009 @ 7:15 pm
I’m not wild about using the word “cure” in the context of the low carb diet, though I do think the Low Carb diet is the best way to treat diabetes ( and the pre-diabetic conditions). The person can’t ever go back to high carb diet or the diabetes will come back, unless the underlying reason for the failure to regulate glucose is addressed and reversed (treatment for diabetes is usually about treating the high BG symptoms than reversing the underlying conditions).
So I look at the LC diet as a management treatment (perhaps the most important management treatment), not a cure.
In general, I think the word cure is used a it too liberally anyway. But nonetheless, I do agree a truly low carb diet is the best way to manage hyperglycemia in the long run.
April 15, 2009 @ 7:25 pm
First, you make an all-too-common error in speaking about diabetes as if it was a single condition, even though from an etiology standpoint, there are few (if any) similarities in the cause, treatment of, or “curing” the two diseases. Dr. Saudek quite obviously has no personal experience of what life with diabetes is actually like, and as an endocrinologist, his function is to treat the symptoms of the disease while ignoring the cause. One could make a fairly compelling argument that type 1 diabetes should probably be treated by immunologists rather than endocrinologists, since it is the immune system that needs repair, not the endocrine system in patients with type 1 diabetes.
You are absolutely right when you quote him “If the answer was obvious, all effort would be directed to it
April 15, 2009 @ 10:04 pm
I question one of your premises: where you say, “And imagine that repeat testing in, say, two months time reveals no evidence of diabetes,” what do you mean by that? Do you mean that his fasting glucose is now at a normal, non-diabetic level? Or do you mean that he can have an oral glucose tolerance test and his responses are non-diabetic responses? If you mean the latter, does that ever actually happen?
That would certainly be at odds with my personal experience. I am a Type 2 diabetic; with a low-carb diet, I have lost 20% of my starting body weight and now maintain a normal weight for my age and height, and my fasting blood glucose and post-meal blood glucose remain within non-diabetic levels. This is only true, however, as long as I remain on the low-carb diet without deviation. A single significant carb excursion, such as the consumption of 50g carb in a single meal (which is not an especially carb-heavy meal) will put my post-meal blood glucose back into diabetic ranges; I certainly couldn’t pass an OGTT with non-diabetic numbers. For that matter, while my fasting blood glucose would still test normal on the following morning after a single carb excursion, if I went above 100g carbs on as few as 3 consecutive days, I’d be back into the diabetic ranges on fasting blood glucose as well.
Low-carb keeps my diabetes in excellent control, and I feel confident that it puts my risk of cardiovascular and other complications at or near the levels experienced by a non-diabetic. This is VERY important, and I’m pretty proud of achieving it. But am I cured? I really don’t think so. I can’t ever let up. My diabetes may be permanently in remission, if I stay permanently on low-carb, but it’s not gone. I completely agree with you that low-carb eating is a remarkably effective TREATMENT for diabetes, but I don’t agree at all that it’s a CURE.
April 16, 2009 @ 1:23 am
http://www.menshealth.com/cda/article.do?site=MensHealth&channel=health&category=other.diseases.ailments&conitem=4a935e4e40fae010VgnVCM20000012281eac____
This is the only article i’ve ever seen that talks about a cure for diabetes.
April 16, 2009 @ 4:10 am
I don’t usually post, but I just could not resist this time ! I am extremely curious as to what prompted this example
April 16, 2009 @ 4:15 pm
I’m another one (of thousands) who has normalised my BG and lipids and improved my BP through eating a diet with non-toxic levels of carbs, and reversed several other symptoms.
But CURED??? No I am a *controlled* diabetic, as that recent pub lunch or that cake I couldn’t resist is only too ready to demonstrate.
You can greatly improve insulin resistance to the point your pancreatic output now becomes sufficient to cover the odd minor indiscretion, which may look like a “cure” until you test it. I suspect tanstaafl was lucky to be caught early and treated sensibly, which doesn’t happen as often as it should.
April 16, 2009 @ 9:21 pm
I think you are right – I am sure I was caught early. My GP was very supportive when it came to SMBG, and other things I requested. Yet the official dietary advice I was given was the standard high carb stuff; health care people I met do toe the party line on this I’m afraid. It was only after I’d learned a lot about diet for myself, put it into practice with good results and started questioning this standard advice, that I got the impression that not everyone in the NHS actually believed it – I did say ‘tacit approval’. You really are on your own when it comes to diet and diabetes. Sad, isn’t it ? What ever happened to ‘informed patient choice’ and ‘evidence based medicine’ ?
April 16, 2009 @ 10:23 pm
Stay on low carb and it is like a cure. You don’t get progressively worse requiring a few limbs to be chopped off.
April 17, 2009 @ 1:29 am
I was diagnosed diabetic after a stroke just on a year ago and put on metformin and gliclazide (sp), I wasn’t really in any fit state to refuse these drugs and took them for about 3 months. I did though, go on a strict low carb diet and have had normal blood sugars ever since, I had an A1C about a month ago which was normal much to the amazement of my GP. This craze for high carb diets is not normal for humans, we still live in hunter/gatherer bodies, bread is poison to us and all those cakes and potatoes etc do us no favours. I look at the people in the streets and see very fat parents with equally fat children all eating doughnuts and other rubbish and I despair. I watched my mother lose a leg to diabetes, she trusted what the doctors told her, eat plenty of carbs and it ended up killing her. I feel healthier and weighing a stone and a half less, I can walk for miles, something I couldn’t do a year ago………
April 17, 2009 @ 6:34 pm
Dr Briffa,
I agree with you but cannot understand why other doctors and dieticians don’t get it. If you reduce your carbs and need less medication as a result (or none) is this not a simple equation? So why all the antagonism to it? Is it that they are all in cahoots with Tate and Lyle?
April 17, 2009 @ 8:48 pm
Hilda, I think its the fact that if you remove the carbs you have to up the other macros. You can only up protein so much and then you need to up the fat. Doctors are still too scared of fat – particularly sat fat. Usually diabetics have heart issues – high cholesterol, trigs and for these issues docs put them on low fat.
Kristine, what a fantastic turn-around. I’m saddened by the story of your mum.
April 18, 2009 @ 3:30 am
[...] Dr. Briffa ask the question: Can diabetes be cured? [...]
April 20, 2009 @ 6:20 pm
My GP has to toe the Party Line – high carb diet and no test strips – but it’s pretty obvious she doesn’t actually believe it herself. Some of the nurses seem able to get away with mentioning low carb diets without fear of losing their jobs.
I agree with Sue, that paranoia about fats which “cause” heart disease and the protein which “causes” kidney disease means they have little alternative but to recommend carbs. Which curiously enough actually DO cause cardiovascular disease and damage kidneys through generating high BG and high levels of insulin (sigh) my lipids on a Heart Healthy diet were a heart attack waiting to happen, now they are better than many nondiabetics. GP approves of the improvement but freaks out when I tell her how I achieved it . . .
April 21, 2009 @ 7:13 am
“GP approves of the improvement but freaks out when I tell her how I achieved it . . .”
That always makes me laugh – if you achieved improvements with that type of diet then surely the diet caused the improvements.
April 24, 2009 @ 1:21 pm
I think my GP is significantly more intelligent than the accountants permit her to be. Nevertheless she has been bombarded with endless propaganda
http://www.bmj.com/cgi/eletters/338/mar05_2/b800
I keep meaning to respond but have not yet managed to be polite enough . . .
April 24, 2009 @ 1:37 pm
another new convert. sort of diagnosed in February by my wife as we have a testing kit in the house (grandaughters). My wife is a long time fan of Dr Briffa and low carb for weight control – I was off the scale with ketones. Double vision and funny hands. Wthin three weeks of low carb my sugars were in normal ranges, eye sight ok and fingers improving day on day. Absolutely sure I wouldn’t do that under normal NHS teatment. I do have an advantage, I love meat and dont like bread etc in quantity. I was eating too much chocolate, biscuits, icecream and cake. I am guilty of not taking enough exercise.
April 25, 2009 @ 12:52 pm
I am a vocational (Heavy Goods) license holder. I have also been diagnosed type2 diabetic. To retain my license I must undergo a private medical examination and questionnaire every five years.
Five years ago, I truthfully answered the question on diabetes to say that I had been diagnosed type 2 diabetic but had not to date been prescribed oral or intravenous mediacation. The Doctor correspondingly completed the form and the out come was that it generated a letter from the DVLA acknowledging the condition and informing that I must notify changes in my prescription, or such like.
A couple of months ago, the process came around again and I paid my
June 4, 2009 @ 5:05 pm
New breakthroughs in science have come up with interesting products. I have been considering trying a product that I heard about called Syntra5. Has anyone heard of this or perhaps tried it?
June 22, 2009 @ 4:20 pm