
Weight loss can reverse type 2 diabetes: Study
Losing weight — without exercise — and maintaining a healthy diet can cause Type 2 diabetes to go into remission and allow patients to stop taking medications, according to a study that challenges the long-held medical belief that the acquired disease is a lifelong illness.
Published Wednesday in the medical journal Lancet, the study shows that patients who committed to a strict diet and then managed their new weight were able to stay off medication to manage their diabetes.
“Especially in the United States, there’s a widespread belief that diabetes can only be managed by drugs,” Roy Taylor, one of the study’s co-authors, told the Washington Times. “We’ve got quite an uphill battle of getting a buy-in from [doctors] that this is possible, but I think the results of the Lancet trial should overcome that.”
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, about 30 million people in the U.S. have diabetes, with up to 95 percent of them suffering from the Type 2 form of the disease. Diabetes occurs when the body can’t produce enough insulin to manage glucose levels. Nearly 80,000 people died from diabetes-related complications in the U.S. this year.
A Type 2 diabetes diagnosis usually occurs in adults over the age of 45 who are overweight and inactive, but numbers are rising among young people and even children, a result of the ongoing obesity epidemic in the U.S.
Recommended treatment options include healthy eating and exercise, medication and in some cases insulin replacement.
For the study, participants were between 20 and 65 years old, overwei
Continue
reading