
Curing Diabetes: How Type 2 Became an Accepted Lifestyle
Diabetes is big business, and many have been convinced that managing it forever is their only option. But it is possible to cure the disease.
Chuck Lynch figured that after being diagnosed with type 2 (adult onset) diabetes, he was destined for a life of daily finger sticks and medication to keep the glucose level in his blood at a normal level.
Everything he'd heard about type 2 suggested strongly that his only choice was to make the best of it. "I thought it was something you managed for the rest of your life," said the 62-year-old Lyme, Connecticut, resident. "I didn't know you could cure it."
Experts hesitate to talk about "curing" diabetes, given the medical complications it can cause that will require lifelong monitoring. But the American Diabetes Association says that maintaining normal blood sugar without medication for at least a year could be considered a "complete remission."
It's not a message you hear very often if your information about type 2 diabetes comes mainly from TV commercials for the devices and medications used to manage the disease. Diabetes is a big business, worth tens of billions of dollars to the health care system and the pharmaceutical companies that hold the patents on those devices and medications.
Another reason you don't hear about remission is it takes a great deal of effort. Even the health care system seems content to prescribe complex lifelong treatment regimens instead of equipping people with the tools they need to effectively manage type 2 diabetes, possibly reverse the disease or, best of all, avoid it completely.
Chuck Lynch creat
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