
Type 2 diabetes is 'reversible through weight loss'
Many doctors and patients do not realize that weight loss can reverse type 2 diabetes. Instead, there is a widespread belief that the disease is "progressive and incurable," according to a new report published in the BMJ.
This is despite there being "consistent evidence" that shedding around 33 pounds (15 kilograms) often produces "total remission" of type 2 diabetes, note Prof. Mike E. J. Lean and other researchers from the University of Glasgow in the United Kingdom.
The thrust of their paper is that greater awareness, when combined with better recording and monitoring of remissions, could result in many more patients no longer having to live with type 2 diabetes and a massive reduction in healthcare costs.
The global burden of type 2 diabetes has nearly quadrupled over the past 35 years. In 1980, there were around 108 million people with the disease, and by 2014, this number had risen to 422 million.
The vast majority of diabetes cases are type 2 diabetes, which is a disease that results when the body becomes less effective at using insulin to help cells to convert blood sugar, or glucose, into energy. Excess body weight is a main cause of this type of diabetes.
In the United States, an estimated 30.3 million people, or around 9.4 percent of the population, have diabetes - including around 7.2 million who do not realize it.
Diabetes accounts for a high portion of the national bill for taking care of the sick. The total direct and indirect cost of diagnosed diabetes in the U.S. was estimated to be $245 billion in 2012.
In that year, of the $13,700 average medical spend fo
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