9/10/2015
The question for a long time has been whether type 2 diabetes can be reversed?
An article that appeared in the NYT Ask Well Blog suggests that in some people it is riverside.
Dr Judith Franklin, director of the division of diabetes, endocrinology and metabolic diseases at the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases suggests that weight loss and exercise can reduce the bodies requirement for insulin and therefore a diabetic can once again become a pre-diabetic. Studies have also shown that extreme low calorie diets or bariatric surgery can even reverse more established diabetic cases but “we still need more information on how long the remission is going to last,” Dr. Fradkin said.
A small study in 2011 has shown that when diabetic patients go onto a 600 calorie a day diet, within a week diabetes can be reversed. The issue is that such a highly restrictive diet cannot be maintained. “We still need more information on how long the remission is going to last,” Dr. Fradkin said.
Bariatric surgery is now used as a powerful procedure for reversing diabetes. After surgery diabetes in some patients is reversed quickly, even before weight loss occurs and then is maintained for at least several years.
A recent study reported that 19 of 38 bariatric surgery patients — including 37 percent of those who had gastric bypass surgery and 63 percent of those who had a different procedure called biliopancreatic diversion — were still diabetes-free five years after surgery. Bariatric surgery is only recommended for severely obese people and carries risks of its own, Dr. Fradkin noted.
Click here to read the blog in the NY Times
