The Times on Type 2 Diabetes: Part I by Gretchen Becker
If you have Type 2 diabetes and are overweight, you must read this wonderful article by Gretchen Becker. (See link above.)
Several articles on diabetes in the New York Times this week noted that type 2 diabetes is not caused by simple sloth and gluttony: it has a strong genetic component. Furthermore, weight loss alone may not make type 2 diabetes go away, because the underlying cause is insufficient insulin as well as insulin resistance.
Some patients have been saying this for years, but then, who listens to patients? The standard dogma spouted by medical professionals continues to be, "Eat less and exercise more. If you can lose weight, sometimes just 5 or 10 pounds, your diabetes will probably go away."
The standard dogma spouted by journalists has been that Americans are eating too much fast food, that this is making them obese, and that the obesity is causing diabetes.
Patients have also pointed out that without any change in their diet, they suddenly began to put on weight, especially in their stomach, before they were diagnosed with diabetes, suggesting that some metabolic defect was causing the weight gain, rather than the weight gain causing the metabolic defect. But no one listened. People thought, "Yeah, yeah. They're probably cramming themselves with doughnuts when no one is looking."
A metabolic defect that shows up years before people are diagnosed with metabolic syndrome or diabetes means that people with this defect are unable to store carbohydrates correctly. Instead the carbohydrates are converted to fat, and this extra fat is deposited in the stomach.
Then this extra fat causes insulin resistance, and in those without the pancreatic reserves to increase their output of insulin, the insulin resistance causes type 2 diabetes.
Read the entire article!