Reversing Type 2 Diabetes? Yes, It Can Be Done

Reversing Type 2 diabetes? Yes, it can be done

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Increasingly, research is showing that Type 2 diabetes can be put into long-term remission.
"It's taken years to accumulate this evidence," said Dr. Hertzel Gerstein, diabetes expert at McMaster University. "Ten years ago people would have been very skeptical that it's even possible."
Type 2 diabetes affects one in 10 Canadians. It is a serious metabolic disorder that can result in stroke, kidney failure, blindness, amputations and premature death. Right now doctors try to manage the disease using drugs to control a patient's blood glucose levels. Some of those drugs have serious side-effects.
"If you're on drugs it's not really remission, it's just controlling the disease," Gerstein said.
We reached him in Lisbon, where he's attending an international diabetes conference. At that meeting, a U.K. group presented research showing that Type 2 diabetes remission can be sustained for up to 10 years through weight loss.
Gerstein's own group is conducting a series of trials studying ways to reverse the condition using a combination of diet, exercise, counselling and short-term drug therapy.
Still, the goal of remission is not routinely being offered to patients right now.
"If you ask more experts at this meeting they'd say, 'Great idea,' but they'd have huge arguments about what to do and how to do it," Gerstein said. "The only way to resolve these arguments is to do the research."
Also this week, a group of U.K. Continue reading

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Suffering from diabetes? These five apps can help you manage your lifestyle better

Diabetes requires long-term treatment, often spanning over many years. This makes adherence to a blood sugar-controlling lifestyle, such as healthy eating, regular physical activity, and timely medication, a challenge.
It is common for patients to make errors in their diabetes management, by either binge eating carbohydrates on a particular day, not exercising enough, or forgetting to take their medicine. Fortunately, patients today have access to mobile apps that can help them manage their diabetes and keep their blood sugar under control.
Here are five apps that can make the lives of patients with diabetes simpler:
1) Wellthy Diabetes:
Wellthy is an AI-powered personal health coach for people with Type 2 diabetes. Carey, its virtual diabetes educator, provides immediate, personalised feedback on logging meals, activity and blood sugar levels. All the logged data gets stored and analysed, and can be shared with the doctor.
The app also provides certified diabetes educators to coach patients and answer their queries, and has been approved to be prescribed by doctors.
2) Life in control:
By connecting doctors, patients and diabetes coaches, this app helps people with diabetes manage their blood sugar level and maintain a healthy lifestyle. The app offers personalised and easy-to-follow diet plans, sets daily healthcare goals, provides regular access to the coaches, and allows the doctors to track HbA1C and blood sugar levels, medicines, insulin and other health vitals of their patients.
3) Diabeto
Diabeto provides a comprehensive diabetes management solution. The app allows Continue reading

8 easy health tips for people with type 2 diabetes

Type 2 diabetes occurs when your body can no longer control the amount of sugar in your blood. It can lead to a number of complications, if it's not managed properly, including heart disease, sight loss and nerve damage.
The number of people diagnosed with the condition has risen by 54% in last decade. And experts are warning that type 2 diabetes is fast becoming one of the biggest health crises of our time – with 12 million people at risk of developing the condition.
If you've been recently diagnosed, it's easy to feel daunted. But help is at hand. We asked pharmacist Anshu Bhimbat LloydsPharmacy about the best ways to work with your doctor to manage your type 2 diabetes (and even 'reverse' the condition in some cases).
He says: "There are a few things that you can do to help manage diabetes and make it a part of your day to day life. Small lifestyle changes can make living with type 2 diabetes easier, delay the progression and support a healthier lifestyle. In some cases, dietary changes and weight loss can even help reverse the insulin sensitivity that people with type 2 diabetes experience."
Here are the tips he gives to patients:
1. Cut down on carbohydrates
Carbs aren't the enemy – we all need them to survive. But the type and amount you consume can make a difference to your condition. Diabetes UK suggests these ways of including good carbohydrates in your diet, for instance:
Choose wholegrain breads and cereals.
Have fruit whole, rather than as a juice. Eating an apple with the skin on, for example, will provide more fibre than drinking a glass of apple juice.
Tr Continue reading

There may be a way to reverse type 2 diabetes

The link between a very low-calorie diet and the illness was discovered by a team of researchers from Yale University. For their study, the scientists used rats that had the disease and put them on a calorie-restricted diet where they ate about 25% of their normal food intake.
The study, published in Cell Metabolism, was inspired by the fact that many people with type 2 diabetes achieve remission after undergoing weight-loss surgery — which significantly reduces calorie intake before and after the procedure.
About one in three Americans will have type 2 diabetes by 2050, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
“Using this approach to comprehensively interrogate liver carbohydrate and fat metabolism, we showed that it is a combination of three mechanisms that is responsible for the rapid reversal of hyperglycemia following a very low calorie diet,” lead author Gerald I. Shulman said in a statement.
In only three days, the rats had significantly lower blood glucose levels, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported. The new diet decreased the amount of lactose and amino acids in the rats' bodies that became glucose and reduced the rate of liver glycogen-to-glucose. It also helped the rats livers respond to insulin more efficiently through a loss of body fat.
The Yale News said that the next step will be to apply these findings in a human study.
“These results,” Shulman said, “if confirmed in humans, will provide us with novel drug targets to more effectively treat patients with type 2 diabetes.” Continue reading

World Diabetes Day

Registration for the Walkathon 2017 is now open for schools, please follow the below link:
http://www.qda.org.qa/page?a=120&lang=en-CA
What is World Diabetes Day!
World Diabetes Day is the primary global awareness campaign of the diabetes and is held on November 14 of each year. It was introduced in 1991 by the International Diabetes Federation and the World Health Organization in response to the alarming rise of diabetes around the world. World Diabetes Day is a campaign that features a new theme chosen by the International Diabetes Federation each year to address issues facing the global diabetes community. While the campaigns last the whole year, the day itself marks the birthday of Frederick Banting who, along with Charles Best, first conceived the idea which led to the discovery of insulin in 1922.
Each year, World Diabetes Day is centered on a theme related to diabetes. Topics covered have included diabetes and human rights, diabetes and lifestyle, diabetes and obesity, diabetes in the disadvantaged and the vulnerable, diabetes in children and adolescents, eyes on Diabetes. The theme of World Diabetes Day 2017 is Women and diabetes - our right to a healthy future.
Women and diabetes - our right to a healthy future
The campaign will promote the importance of affordable and equitable access for all women at risk for or living with diabetes to the essential diabetes medicines and technologies, self-management education and information they require to achieve optimal diabetes outcomes and strengthen their capacity to prevent type 2 diabetes.
IDF will release campaign mate Continue reading