Proven: Diet Alone Can Reverse Diabetes
Functional practitioners & nutritionists have been saying this for years...
Type 2 Diabetes is an Epidemic
I wrote about this “up-coming” epidemic in the 1980’s. This was when I authored an entire page, once a month, in the San Francisco Chronicle. In the Healthful Living Section.
In that article, I wrote that eating so much sugar and processed foods and even hidden sugars in many canned and boxed foods and drinks, was driving part of the risk of getting diabetes. Also, that low-fat and high-carb diets were not helping. This was the “rage” for many years, promoted by the American Heart Association, Dietitians, and many other “experts”.
Michael Bauer, my editor, called me in and said he had “good” news and “bad” news.
The good news was this was a cutting-edge important piece.
The bad news was that C&H Sugar was a major advertiser in the paper.
So… I was fired.
The Diet/Disease Link
There is such reluctance to talk about our diet/disease link.
Plus, it also seems we are trying to become so politically correct about everything, even obesity. Rather than call a chubby spade a spade, we are glorifying “over-weight-ness”.
I think our experts even downplayed how obesity was a major co-morbidity for ending up in the ICU if you got Covid. They didn’t want to be seen as shaming the overweight.
There is a mighty fine line between embracing all humanity and helping humanity stay healthy.
We love all our people, large and small. But large often comes with larger risks. Like diabetes.
Type 2 Diagnosis
Every year, about 1.4 million US adults are diagnosed with type 2 diabetes (Type 2 D).
When docs discuss treatment options with newly diagnosed type 2 D patients, they typically fail to include “whole-food” and "predominately “plant-based” dietary interventions.
As potential strategies to achieve “remission” without medications or procedures.
Drugs are typically offered first. Rather than dietary or lifestyle changes.
Or a discussion of intermittent fasting (IF). The Canadian nephrologist Jason Fung MD has been turning around diabetes with IF. Rapidly. Often in long-standing type 2 diabetics.
Medicine, sadly, mostly, turns toward meds. Making people dependent on a pharmaceutical conveyer belt.
“Remission” should be the main goal. Even with type 2 D.
Diet and Type 2 Diabetes
Evidence demonstrates that a person's diet is a “significant” driver of type 2 D and the morbidity and mortality from it. Worldwide. Duh! Why does it take so long to figure this out?
But as Cate Collings MD wrote in Medscape July 12, 2022:
But a lack of physician training, false assumptions that patients are not willing to engage in intensive interventions, and misguided quality measures that ultimately penalize successful outcomes through nutritional lifestyle interventions frequently result in treatment plans that approach Type 2 D more like an irreversible chronic illness.
Fortunately, the medical community is recognizing the need for change.
In May, the American College of Lifestyle Medicine published an expert consensus statement "Dietary Interventions to Treat Type 2 Diabetes in Adults with a Goal of Remission" that was endorsed by the American Association of Clinical Endocrinology, supported by the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, and co-sponsored by the Endocrine Society.
The expert panel behind the consensus statement focused on diet — without medications or procedures — as a primary means of achieving “lasting remission” of diabetes. Rather than its more common role as an adjunctive therapy.
You Are What You Eat
You can eat (and move) your way “out” of type 2 Diabetes. (Not out of type 1 Diabetes, btw. Though of course it still helps even in this autoimmune version of diabetes).
A multidisciplinary expert panel (including representatives from seven other medical organizations) agreed on the effectiveness of a whole-food, plant-based diet and reduced calorie intake.
And a very–low-carbohydrate diet. (I think really reducing “processed” carbs, as some carbs are pretty good, in moderation, like quinoa).
Boy, professionals fought the functional community for years about the unhealthiness of processed carbs.
But here we go.
This is a pattern.
The functional community embraces new and unique healthy practices that are maligned by the mainstream. Only to eventually have the mainstream embrace them years later while many patients miss out.
I remember the first time I ordered a Hemoglobin A1C in the early 1980s and got creamed by many allopathic practitioners. They said this blood test can’t tell us anything.
Of course, now we all run it. All docs are guided by it to help all patients. Drug companies brag about it on TV!
The panel had consensus that remission should be defined as “normal glycemic measures” (normal A1c < 6.5% and normal fasting glucose) for at least 3 months without surgery, devices, or active pharmacologic therapy to lower glucose.
In the functional medicine community, our goal is an A1C of 5.1 or less. Under this level, less tissue damage is occurring. In multiple organs. As it does at higher levels.
It can be argued that failure to present a food-as-medicine treatment option to individuals with type 2 diabetes is a failure of informed consent and shared decision-making. (YES! -added by Berkson)
Numerous studies show that sufficiently intensive lifestyle interventions may result in type 2 diabetes remission, with a success rate similar to bariatric surgery but without the excessive costs of surgery or the potential complications.
Nevertheless, patients are often steered to riskier and more invasive treatments before consideration of intensive lifestyle changes.
Yep. To not highlight lifestyle and diet, in my mind, is akin to malpractice.
To prescribe food as medicine, the practitioner needs to develop the knowledge and skills to do so.
Just as medication must be dosed correctly to achieve the desired result, intensive lifestyle interventions must be dosed sufficiently to achieve remission.
Behavioral and food interventions need to be more “intensive” to help reverse blood sugar issues, those with the goal of preventing type 2 diabetes.
Many lifestyle medicine treatment plan failures are the result of incorrect dosing. Or incomplete information. Or nutrient insufficiencies.
Eat less.
Eat smarter.
Move more.
Certain specific supplements may enhance and ease this journey of healing.
Remission
Remission won't happen for everyone. Say these docs now embracing food to end diabetes.
Some studies suggest that the longer an individual has had diabetes, the less likely they are to achieve remission. But that may be ignorance once again.
Dr. Jason Fung MD has been putting diabetics won insulin for decades… successfully into remission. And rapidly. Through specific intermittent fasting. Monitored by a savvy doc.
Other doctors have fasted or reduced calories and processed foods in patients. Then tracked pancreatic and liver health daily via MRIs. This in-depth imaging demonstrated that as diet changes or calories reduce, damaging fat “marches” out of these organs. The tissues, like beta cells in the pancreas, begin to function again. Surprisingly, rapidly.
Knowledge is power. It’s all about what you know.
Or rather, what your practitioner knows.
And then if you do the “work”.
One doctor you know may lean on medication. Another on behavioral change. Another may combine multiple modalities. For example, oxytocin replacement may turn back on “beta” cell functionality and tamp down appetite… in some patients. Not all.
But few doctors know about this.
Feel free to share this information. Thank you for reading it.
Dr. B.
Reference:
How Diet Alone Can Achieve Remission in Diabetes - Medscape - Jul 12, 2022.
Wow, Dr. Berkson you never cease to amaze me (us) with your outside-the-allopathic-medical-box knowledge and thinking... on a wide variety of health related subject areas.
Thank you lovely & very smart lady!
You are an unrecognized National Treasure gem!
Shalom Aleichem.