I’ve been pondering about this for days. I’m actually wondering how many replies I’d get out of this discussion. Can Type 2 really be reversed??? Type 2 is when we DO produce insulin, however, the pancreas fails to secrete enough insulin or the body fails to recognize the insulin to use it properly. Now, since type 2 does produce insulin, could there be a way that with proper diet, exercise, and treatment, you could actually reverse the disease and regenerate the pancreas. Sounds weird, but what do you think??? My doctor even told me that it could be reversed, but he could always be wrong.
Or is it, when you get the disease, you’re stuck with it.
Hi Laura , my humble observation , regardless of getting rid of meds (ie including insulin and NOT having to take these anymore) , eating proper meals , ( regularly scheduled ) and exercise regularly one always will be a "person with diabetes " …I think it would be called " controlled " type 2 diabetes.
There is one diabetic on this site Mr. Peachy claims to have reversed his. I tried and did not succeed in reversing it and it got much worst. In my case a little insulin in the beggining would have gone a long way in keeping the disease fun. Now it is a nightmare.
Of course healthy eating and exercise are always good for any diabetic. There is disagreement on what healthy eating for a diabetic is.
I have read where type 2 diabetes was reversed after a man had gastric by-pass surgery, lost over 100 pounds, etc. I still consider him “a person with diabetes”, even though it is controlled. I doubt it ever truly goes away.
I’m of two minds on this, and those two minds show why I feel “diabetes” – even “Type 2 diabetes” is an insufficient description of the medical facts. On the one hand is insulin production levels and beta cell health – the lack of both being assumed when a diagnosis of “diabetes” is pronounced. However, in the case of people who have certain distributions of excess fat, the fat can produce lipokines (“fat hormones”) that block insulin action – even to, and beyond, the points of clinical diagnosis of “diabetes”.
If the clinical diagnosis is made based on blood glucose levels, in the presence of someone who has that type of body fat, it is possible that that person has high levels of lipokines responsible for insulin resistance and normal-to-high serum insulin levels – this could be before, or after, beta cell destruction has begun – it is possible that with weight loss, the lipokine levels will drop, and because there is still normal-to-high insulin production, that person will be able to live most of the rest of his/her life as “normal”. I’m not sure that lipokine-blocked insulin action should be diagnosed as “diabetes” in the absence of known beta-cell destruction, but today’s clinical diagnostic tests don’t test for those lipokines or for serum insulin levels.
“Type 2 is when we DO produce insulin, however, the pancreas fails to secrete enough insulin or the body fails to recognize the insulin to use it properly”
Well, no. Medically type 2 is anything that is not type 1, not gestational, not caused by an accident/drug and where the persons blood sugar numbers fall into the diabetic category. I believe that’s why there are so many in the type 2 category because it’s a catch all. If you look at a type 1, they all have something in common, insulin antibodies. Look at type 2’s, there is no common thing between them all other than issues with blood sugar. Some are overweight and inactive, some are underweight and very active, some produce too much insulin, some produce too little insulin, some produce no insulin, some are very insulin resistant, some are not insulin resistant and some are very insulin sensitive. Some have genetic problems in the pancreas, some have them elsewhere, some have them all over the place. Really we know next to nothing about diabetes and type 2 is no different. Give it some time and more classes will come out and maybe one or some of them will be reversible but who knows. My feeling is right now, probably not but with further medical breakthroughs anything is possible.
If you are overweight and inactive, then depending on how long you’ve had T2 and how hard your pancreas has had to work, there’s a good chance you can reverse it or at the very least, improve it. I did way back in 1978.
Although I’m T1.5 (LADA) now (with some insulin resistance), I doubt very much I was T1.5 back then because I wasn’t on insulin until 4-5 years ago. Back then, was a typical T2 presentation. Lost weight (wasn’t all that much overweight, but enough), watched what I ate, got active and my numbers (blood tests) were perfectly normal for quite a few years until I fell pregnant. Gestational diabetes was very much expected and afterwards, it all went downhill from there, even at a normal weight - but that was likely the beginning of T1.5 and was the start of an unrelated autoimmune disease.
I’d say, in the early years of a classic T2 insulin-resistant presentation - overweight, not very active, and eating hi carb, yes it can be reversed. That’s why changes in lifestyle is so strongly promoted. Even more so in the pre-diabetes stage, which I was well past when I was first diagnosed. I have a friend who is doing exactly this now, and his BGLs have improved back into the normal range at all times, with just a bit of weight loss, and not eating all the chocolates and ice creams he used to - it was too much of a load.
If you want to look at all the different T2 types as Duncan mentions, then those types may not be able to do what I did because their diabetes isn’t about insulin resistance or lifestyle changes.
Duncan wrote: <<If you look at a type 1, they all have something in common, insulin antibodies>>
Not necessarily. It’s not usually insulin antibodies. Mostly it’s antibodies that destroy the beta cells. In some T1s no antibodies of any kind can be detected.
I was diagnosed as type 2 a year ago, through blood tests for another condition. My blood sugar levels were quite high - we use the mmol/l system here. Through exercise and diet, if I went in today and asked to be tested to see whether I had diabetes the answer would be ‘no’, because my glucose levels are lower than the value that doctors here use to assess for diabetes. Does that mean I don’t have diabetes - or I have reversed it? Sadly - no, if I went back to eating as I used to - which being a vegetarian wasn’t too bad, my blood sugar levels would rise again.
Reversing diabetes must mean that you can then go out and eat a big portion of high GI index carbohydrate and have normal blood sugars in one to two hours - I can’t ever see me being able to do that.
I think while a lot of T2’s can successfully manage their D with diet and exercise (which often results in significant weight loss), I wouldn’t consider any of them to be “cured” at that point - because if they returned to their old lifestyle or gained weight, most would still have uncontrolled BG - that just doesn’t change.
And I agree with the first reply, it should just be referenced as “controlled” or “well controlled” when a person is able to regain normal BG control without meds - they are not “in remission” or “no longer diabetic”.
Insulin antibodies is just a term because they destroy the insulin producing beta cells. We are talking about the same thing in reality.
I knew somebody was going to call me out on that “all have antibodies” but if you look at the technical medical definition of type 1 (I mean if you look in a medical textbook and go by what it says to the letter), antibodies are one of the criteria otherwise you fall into the type 2 bucket. If your doctor is on top of things and you have no insulin production and no antibodies you may get tagged with unknown origin type 1 but mostly you will get labeled a type 2 with no insulin production.
MODY is interesting too. No idea why they called it that because the name has nothing to do with what it is. Really it isn’t type 1 or type 2, it’s MODY and shouldn’t be considered a sub type. LADA is also interesting but in reality it’s type 1 with a long honeymoon period for unknown reasons. Well, at least by my reckoning. Give it a few more years while things get figured out and more types start coming out. We know next to nothing about any type of diabetes so until we do, everything is really just an educated guess and the types are really not well defined.
