Type 2 Diabetes — Let’s talk Remission

How to Reverse Type 2 Diabetes Naturally

Type 2 diabetes is a massive but still growing epidemic.More than 10% of the U.S. population — 34.2 million Americans — has diabetes, a share that has doubled within the last 20 years.An additional 34.5% of American adults has pre-diabetes.

Even more troubling, the rate of diabetes among children rose 95% within the same timeframe.

So why am I optimistic about the future?

From Reader’s Digest — https://www.rd.com/list/how-people-reversed-their-diabetes/

Because type 2 diabetes is not only preventable — it’s also reversible. November is National Diabetes Month so it’s the perfect time to spread this news to a broader audience: Type 2 diabetes can be put into remission.

Type 2 Diabetes Remission

In the mid 1990s, I learned in medical school that type 2 diabetes was a chronic and progressive disease. Until recently, most physicians and health professionals believed that once you had type 2 diabetes, you had it forever. Just earlier this year, the American Diabetes Association (ADA), along with other international experts on diabetes, confirmed that type 2 diabetes is not a life sentence but rather, a disease that can be put into remission. In that consensus paper, they defined remission as sustaining normal blood glucose levels for three months or more after ceasing glucose-lowering medications.

This changes everything. Simply controlling the disease was not good enough; the goal should be full remission. And it’s completely possible. I have helped thousands of patients at my clinic for over a decade achieve remission. The focus was not on taking more medications, but changing their lifestyles — especially their diet.

From Reader’s Digest — https://www.rd.com/list/how-people-reversed-their-diabetes/

Remember that type 2 diabetes is a dietary disease and giving drugs won’t reverse it. That can only be achieved by fixing the root cause — the diet. Our body can store food energy in the form of glucose and body fat. If the storage tanks are filled and we still keep eating, the glucose will spill over into the blood. When blood glucose rises, that’s type 2 diabetes. Think of a sugar bowl that you keep putting sugar into. At some point, it all overflows.

Reversing Type 2 Diabetes

If the problem is simply too much glucose in the body, then the solution is rather obvious.

1. Don’t put so much glucose in.

2. Burn off the stored glucose.

Type 2 diabetes is a disease of glucose, so a diet low in refined carbohydrates works by reducing the food energy (calories) that comes from glucose and increases the calories from proteins and fats. In 2020, the ADA consensus report on nutrition confirmed that “[r]educing overall carbohydrate intake for individuals with diabetes has demonstrated the most evidence for improving glycemia.” Award-winning general practitioner, Dr. David Unwin in the U.K. used a low carbohydrate diet to help 46% of his type 2 diabetes patients achieve a drug-free remission, and a stunning 93% of his patients with pre-diabetes. Dr. David Ludwig, a diabetes specialist and professor at Harvard Medical School agrees that “the future of diabetes lies in a centuries-old approach — a low-carbohydrate diet.”

Intermittent fasting is another promising new dietary strategy to put type 2 diabetes into remission. Again, the logic is easy to understand. If you don’t eat for a period of time, your body will burn off some of the excess glucose in your body. When you’ve burned off enough glucose, it will no longer spill over into the blood. Indeed, this centuries-old approach has also been shown to work in practice.

From Reader’s Digest — https://www.rd.com/list/how-people-reversed-their-diabetes/

The glycemic index provides a list of foods that tend to spike blood glucose, but new technology such as continuous glucose monitors (CGMs) will give people the opportunity to see precisely which foods and actions spike their glucose. By using this biofeedback, people can learn which foods they should and should not avoid.

You will notice I didn’t mention “take insulin” in that list of ways to best treat type 2 diabetes. Insulin doesn’t get rid of excess body glucose. It only moves it from the blood into the body. So, insulin often causes weight gain. As people gain weight, their type 2 diabetes usually gets worse, and they need more insulin — which only causes more weight gain, in a vicious cycle. So, while numerous studies have demonstrated that large insulin doses control blood sugar well, they may also make the underlying type 2 diabetes worse.

Type 2 diabetes is a silent epidemic that contributes heavily to serious conditions, including heart attacks, strokes, kidney failure, blindness, nerve damage and more. This depletes the primary care providers’ energy and costs the healthcare industry billions of dollars every year. But it doesn’t have to be this way. The critical first step is to understand that type 2 diabetes is a reversible, not a chronic disease. When people believe their disease is untreatable and complications are inevitable, then they lose hope. We must give people the tools to reverse their disease, but more importantly, we must restore their hopes and dreams of a healthy future.

Since remission is possible, we can begin to use innovative treatments to help millions of people get better. A future without pricking their fingers multiple times a day. A future where they get to play with their children and grandchildren? A future without amputations or blindness or weeks in a hospital bed with Covid-19 complications? Yes. it is possible. It is our duty.

We can all make a difference. We can restore hope. We can teach new physicians and health professionals about the ADA consensus that remission from type 2 diabetes is attainable for people, even if they were diagnosed years ago. We can teach people that dietary changes, not drugs, are best used to treat their dietary disease. We can think differently about this disease that has become a global pandemic. Innovative companies like Level2 (a health tech startup that is part of UnitedHealth Group and with which I have a partnership as expert clinical advisor) are partnering with doctors and employers across the United States to help turn this tide.

We need more providers, more payers and more employers to step up to fight type 2 diabetes this month and beyond — and we need to do this together. When we agree to combine our power to innovate and move against the status quo, we can eradicate type 2 diabetes.

Dr. Jason Fung

Online Fasting Community and Coaching

For more, check out my YouTube channel, online community and coaching programs at TheFastingMethod.com and my Website & Books