
Study: Type 2 diabetes can be cured through weight loss - ValentineC
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science/science-news/12027265/Type-2-diabetes-can-be-cured-through-weight-loss-Newcastle-University-finds.html
======
coldpie
THANK YOU for putting "Type 2" in the title. Type 1 and Type 2 diabetes are
unrelated diseases. They were given the same name because they have the same
symptoms. It is critically important to specify which disease you are talking
about in any situation, otherwise you might as well conflate cancer and
tuberculosis.

~~~
ionforce
But they are related somehow? Like Java and JavaScript?

~~~
ghkbrew
I suspect you're joking, but I'll go ahead and answer here anyway, because I
find it interesting and think others might as well.

The term "diabetes" refers specifically to the production of large amounts of
urine. The diseases most people are familiar with are fully known as Diabetes
Mellitus, type I and type II. The word "mellitus" is latin with roots in the
word for honey and means sweet or sweetened with honey. So really both
diseases are named for the fact that the produce the symptom of large amounts
of sweet urine. Biologically this is because uncontrolled type I and type I
sufferers have extraordinarily high blood sugars. Some of this excess glucose
is excreted in the urine and osmotically pulls fluid along with it increasing
the total urine volume.

It's worth noting that diabetes (the symptom) can have multiple other causes.
Diabetes Insipidus is caused simply by the excess ingestion of fluids. (i.e.
you urinate a lot when you drink too much water)

~~~
muraiki
No, diabetes insipidus can be caused by hormonal problems, kidneys failing to
respond to hormones, and pregnancy.

~~~
ghkbrew
Fair enough, perhaps I should have said "can be caused by"

DI (technically Dipsogenic DI) can be caused by neurological dysfunction or
psychiatric illness without any hormonal disregulation.

------
armandososa
I was diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes this year (at 34). It was not a surprise
really, I knew I was fat and too sedentary, but I didn't expect to get this
sick so young.

It's weird, because I was so apathetic about being healthy and stuff, but the
moment I got diagnosed something clicked inside my head and I thought "I don't
want to die".

So I changed my habits drastically and started exercising and eating
healthier. I've lost around 35 pounds and my glucose levels from 300+ to ~100.
Most of the symptoms are gone and I feel great. I still take meds, but I'm
confident that if I keep this pace of life it will be reverted or, at least,
I'll got to live longer.

~~~
SCAQTony
Congratulations, that trigger in your mind shows character. I suspect most
people capitulate (obesity stats as a reference) and just take medicine. I
have found that creating activity goals for myself such as races has been a
real motivation to jump in a pool when it's a cold night so that when spring
and summer comes I am ready.

~~~
Bjartr
Why does that trigger in his mind show character, and what does character mean
in this context?

I'm asking seriously, not facetiously.

~~~
medymed
It means that his decision and commitment overcame the tendency to eat (I
assume) excessively and unhealthily, which most people appear to be incapable
of without extreme external intervention.

~~~
SCAQTony
You said it better than I could:

Character : one of the attributes or features that make up and distinguish an
individual.

And what you said makes our friend here an outlier compared to the norm since
he took the effort to grab his disease by the neck, shake it around, and
making it tell him whose his daddy is. ;-)

~~~
armandososa
I just figured that's the way it has to go if you don't want to die. I'm
surprised to see other people (like my father-in-law) that eat and drink like
if they were not sick.

And I like food. A lot. I'm mexican and I can eat tortillas and candies all
day long. Just last year, it was not rare for me to eat ~1/2kg of corn
tortillas with every meal.

------
radicalbyte
I love how the "advice" is to not drink, no soda/sweet drink, eat greens,
whole-wheat and limit fatty red meat.

I do all of that.

I systematically consume more calories than I use and am on the path to
becoming a type 2 diabetic (and recently started corrective changes).

#1 piece of advise should be to not run a systemic calorie excess.

~~~
magic_beans
A shocking number of people are quite ignorant about the nutrition of the food
they consume.

------
dualogy
"Scientists at Newcastle University have shown the disease is caused by fat
accumulating in the pancreas and losing less than one gram from the organ can
reverse the life-limiting illness and restore insulin production."

That vaguely implies to me they have proven that pancreatic beta-cell burnout
is _always_ caused by inter-organ fat, and that losing just 1g (9kcal) of said
inter-organ fat will _always_ result in complete regeneration of the
pancreatic beta-cells in a short period of time.. happy to hear that for all
T2D's if that were indeed the case, still I'm slightly doubtful.

Over the long run of course, barring other chronic conditions, hormonal mega-
mess or organ malfunction, the pancreas should be able to regenerate just like
the liver and other crucial organs, given nutrients time rest and absence of
undue stressors. Well that's a long list of "if"s already. By the time a T2D
is usually diagnosed, shockingly chronically elevated insulin has been doing
quite a bit of damage on their bodies all while still performing the job of
keeping blood sugars stable. By the time this is no longer possible and "high
sugar" is finally diagnosed, a lot will be well out of whack and healthy
regeneration will be a lengthy slow process.

OTOH, I'm not a medical professional.

~~~
DrScump
People need to pay attention to the _extremely_ narrow scope of the study -
ALL subjects were gastric-band patients. Given the subsequent findings that
stomach-reducing surgeries have significant favorable effects on hormonal
balance _unrelated to reduced food consumption_ , I don't see this
generalizing well to other populations who lost similar amounts of weight via
other means.

------
illumen
"2.2 stone" is 13.97 Kg. I really dislike how the UK uses half metric system
and half imperial. Such a mess.

I wonder how much exercise which works on internal organs would help compared
to drastic weight loss? For example, yoga. Of course weight loss has lots of
other benefits, but I'd guess doing exercise which concentrates on internal
organs might help sooner. This might help skinny-fat people too, who have
internal fat but not that much weight.

~~~
athenot
A related gripe of mine is when precision magically appears when conversions
occur. 2.2 stone is 14 Kg if you maintain the same precision.

I think in part that contributes to the metric system being perceived as
complicated.

\- "Keep heater 3 feet (0.91 meter) away from flammable items"

vs.

\- "Keep heater 3 feet (1 meter) away from flammable items"

~~~
csn
I didn't think there was really anyone who actually thinks that the metric
system is more complicated than the imperial one.

------
reasonattlm
This is not new news, but people really don't want to hear that being fat is
bad in the sense of greatly raising the risk of all common age-related disease
and reducing life expectancy.

E.g. here is news from 2011, covering a demonstration of reversing type 2
diabetes via low calorie diets:

[http://www.bbc.com/news/health-13887909](http://www.bbc.com/news/health-13887909)

Note that the diabetes you create through your negligence is not the same as
the diabetes you develop by being old and suffering an age-altered immune
system:

[http://www.salk.edu/news-release/blocking-immune-cell-
treats...](http://www.salk.edu/news-release/blocking-immune-cell-treats-new-
type-age-related-diabetes/)

~~~
miseg
They may also not want to hear they're fat in the first place.

~~~
softawre
#bigboned

------
itchyouch
I wonder if it is just a given or obvious, but it is rarely mentioned that
glucose is stored in the liver and muscles as glycogen.

Insulin signals for uptake of glucose by the muscles and liver. It appears
obvious that glucose absorption/insulin sensitivity would be directly affected
by the glycogen storage capacity of the muscles. So it makes sense that
increasing muscle mass, increasing energy use (physical activity/muscle
recovery), or decreasing glucose intake (caloric deficit/ketogenic diet) would
have dramatic effects on the symptoms of diabetes.

Ultimately, addressing diabetes is an issue of handling glucose storage
through increasing capacity, increasing energy and/or reducing high-glycemic
intake of glucose.

~~~
vinceguidry
> Ultimately, addressing diabetes is an issue of handling glucose storage
> through increasing capacity, increasing energy and/or reducing high-glycemic
> intake of glucose.

Am I going crazy or did you just outline the standard clinical type-2 diabetes
treatment?

~~~
peterhadlaw
IANAD - I am not a doctor.

------
jason_slack
I was told I was type 2 about 2 years ago. I was 36 and weighed about 240
pounds the heaviest I had every been. My daily fasting number was 188-200

Now, I am 195 pounds and my daily fasting number is 116-120. I did through
diet and exercise. I stopped bread, soda, bought low sugar soy milk, major
meal changes. I also started to exercise by buying a home gym.

This has also helped my wife. We now work out together.

At 195 pounds my dr still says I am overweight (although I don't look it) and
next wants me under 180.

If anyone wants advice on how I adjusted my meals, ask. I am not perfect, but
I have experience.

~~~
itchyouch
Chuckles. I am 165 with 15% body fat at 5'6" which puts me at overweight based
on BMI.

You can be "heavier" as long as the weight is in muscle rather than lipids
(fat).

~~~
Shebanator
Yep, BMI is pretty much useless. Body fat percentage FTW.

~~~
jtuente
BMI is far from useless. Unless you're sporting a six-pack, over 6'4 or under
5'1; BMI will fairly accurately gauge your overall fitness level. The range
for a normal adult is absolutely huge. Small-fat and body-builders are the
only people who have any reason to be skeptical of their own BMI.

------
pouetpouet
Link to the study
[http://care.diabetesjournals.org/content/early/2015/11/29/dc...](http://care.diabetesjournals.org/content/early/2015/11/29/dc15-0750.full.pdf+html)

------
raverbashing
Well, not really surprising (though the part about fat in the organ is
surprising)

But people will keep demanding a pill to solve their problems and not move
their fat bottoms and continue to splurge so

~~~
claar
> move their fat bottoms

I wish people would stop repeating this myth.

You cannot outrun the fork.

Being overweight is primarily an eating issue, not an exercise issue. The
calories burned while exercising are minuscule compared to food intake.

Daily recommended calorie intake averages ~2000 calories. I was going over
that by ~1000 per day before adjusting my habits, and I don't think I was
unusual.

A marathon is estimated to burn 2600 calories. The hardest 30-minute CrossFit
workouts burn ~300 calories. So every day I should have run 1/3 of a marathon,
or completed 3.3 max-effort CrossFit workouts.

You cannot outrun the fork. I've lost over 60 pounds in the last year by
changing my eating habits. I started doing regular Freeletics (like CrossFit)
8 weeks ago, and actually stopped losing weight.

~~~
dragonwriter
> The calories burned while exercising are minuscule compared to food intake.

Not at all true; since I've started tracking my burn rate, my high-exercise
days are about 50% higher than my low-exercise days (at not even at the
extreme ends of either; high extreme is about 100% higher than the low
extreme.)

> Being overweight is primarily an eating issue, not an exercise issue.

Being overweight (at least, insofar as its a particular health concern, which
is mostly about _body fat_ rather than _weight_ ) is a complicated issue that
varies between individuals and can involve lifestyle -- particularly both
eating _and_ exercise -- and other health conditions. The most valuable
intervention -- whether its dietary changes, exercise changes, medication,
surgical intervention, or otherwise -- may be different for different people.

> Daily recommended calorie intake averages ~2000 calories.

That's the standard used for the bases for percentages of daily recommended
intake of various nutrients in FDA-mandated labels, for a variety of reasons
[0], but its not actually the average recommendation for maintenance intake.
[1]

> I was going over that by ~1000 per day before adjusting my habits, and I
> don't think I was unusual.

So, you were eating about maintenance level for a young adult male, but
probably living a sedentary lifestyle. Either increasing activity to an active
lifestyle or reducing eating could correct that.

> You cannot outrun the fork.

Repeating that multiple times doesn't make it true.

> I've lost over 60 pounds in the last year by changing my eating habits.

And after stabilizing my weight by altering my eating habits, I lost over 60
pounds in a year by altering my exercise habits (a combination of twice-weekly
1-hour gym workouts and something like 15 hours a week of dance
class/parties/practice.)

> I started doing regular Freeletics (like CrossFit) 8 weeks ago, and actually
> stopped losing weight.

If you didn't ramp up your eating, the most likely reason is because you've
been gaining lean body mass at the expense of body fat. That's at least as
good as just losing body fat (and better than losing weight if it _isn 't_
body fat that is being lost.)

[0] [http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2011/08/why-
does-t...](http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2011/08/why-does-the-fda-
recommend-2-000-calories-per-day/243092/)

[1] [http://www.webmd.com/diet/estimated-calorie-
requirement](http://www.webmd.com/diet/estimated-calorie-requirement)

~~~
claar
I agree with your post, so thank you for your reply (and congratulations on
your habit changes!).

I admit my comment was over-stated; intentionally so to combat the popular
notion that fat people just need to go to the gym more.

------
angelbob
It's interesting that the article says "18 people" were cured. Was that a 100%
yield? Or was it from a larger group? Overall, not a wonderfully written
article, and I didn't see a link to the original study text :-/

~~~
DrScump
I was shocked, _shocked_ , to hear that 18 people _with gastric band surgery_
lost weight and improved their blood sugar control. Again, how well that
generalizes to the general no-surgery public is the question.

------
mhkool
Dr Mark Hyman explained in this video from 2011
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=abGeRIEyEoE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=abGeRIEyEoE)
how to cure diabetes. He also explained that you do not have to be large to be
"fat" since thin people with diabetes have fat around the organs which has the
same effect as the belly fat. A very interesting video where Mark Hyman also
explains how functional medicin works and what diet is best.

~~~
medymed
Went to functional medicine website. Says it integrates traditional medicine
plus things like [mind body spirit etc, supplements, detoxification, holism].
Sounds like a few mds wanted to start a brand and get on the supplement train.
Choo choo!

~~~
sageabilly
From WebMD: "Holistic medicine is a form of healing that considers the whole
person -- body, mind, spirit, and emotions -- in the quest for optimal health
and wellness."

There are doctors aboard the woo-woo tinfoil hat train, for sure, but from
what I've experienced it's more of a trend towards going "Huh, so you're not
sleeping well, let's see if that might be caused by stress in your life or
lots of coffee in your diet" instead of going "Can't sleep eh? Here have these
drugs!"

~~~
medymed
I agree with your trend and think it's a good one.The first consideration on
the medical differential for sleep anormalities is poor sleep hygiene, as in
caffeine in evening, poor environment for sleep, change in daily schedule,
acute stress, etc.

Doctors who jump to pushing pills first do not do so because they are doctors,
but because they are bad/lazy doctors. The non-medical holistic supplement
camp has created a false dichotomy in care considerations to win market share.
Functional medicine appears to be a means of reversing that trend, but with
its branding and endorsement of things like detoxifixation I start to worry.

Unfortunately, as you mentioned, there do appear to be too many docs pushing
pills to get people in and out quickly, and for those shitty docs the
dichotomy is not very false.

------
quux
"Scientists at Newcastle University have shown the disease is caused by fat
accumulating in the pancreas and losing less than one gram from the organ can
reverse the life-limiting illness and restore insulin production."

Wait... I thought type 2 diabetes was caused by _too much_ insulin in the
blood leading to insulin resistance in the rest of the body, weight gain,
metabolic syndrome, etc. Am I confused?

~~~
spuz
As I understand it's the other way round. Your body's cells become resistant
the the presence of insulin which encourages the pancreas to create more
insulin in order to process sugar in the blood. Eventually resistance is great
enough that blood sugar levels become high enough to cause damage.

------
athenot
\- While the study is interesting, it was conducted on only 18 people. It will
be more interesting to see the result of their 200-person study in a few
years.

\- "Just" losing weight appears misleading since we're talking about
pancreatic fats, which may be present in non-obese people.

------
srameshc
I am 142 lbs now. Not much weight, and eat very less fat, mostly from olive
oil, which helps regulate my sugar levels well than other veg oil or corn oil.
I measure a lot my levels. But still I am type 2 diabetic and I believe it
will stay with me forever. Wonder what exercise I need to do to get the
pancreatic fats out. Update: Loosing about 13% of the body weight helps loose
0.6 grams of pancreatic fat. Maybe that should be my goal to become Type 2
free.

~~~
Ueland
>Wonder what exercise I need to do to get the pancreatic fats out.

The only thing that makes it happen is a calorie deficit. It is easier to
avoid eating them than training them away afterwards.

------
nonbel
This appears to be the paper:
[http://care.diabetesjournals.org/content/early/2015/11/29/dc...](http://care.diabetesjournals.org/content/early/2015/11/29/dc15-0750.abstract)

I tried reading it but couldn't figure out which panel corresponded to what
group in figure 2B/C so I stopped.

------
DrScump
Here's a very interesting paper from a year ago that popped up elsewhere
today. Note the effect of TRF even when calories and macronutrients are kept
constant:

[http://www.pnas.org/lens/pnas/111/47/16647](http://www.pnas.org/lens/pnas/111/47/16647)

------
rizjoj
I'm not sure why this is news? Every endodrinologist has been saying this
forever (my wife is one) and she said that this article has needlesly spread.
It's like saying: Study finds eating less causes weight loss! It's also why
doctors sometimes recommend weight loss surgery.

------
aggieben
Speaking out of absolutely zero personal experience with diabetes, I have
always been under the impression that Type 2 was basically solvable through
weight loss and changes in diet. Is this study telling us anything new?

~~~
angelbob
It is frequently believed to be preventable by those things. Systematic study
is uncommon, I believe.

Of course, this is at least a terrible summary article, not clear if it's a
good study.

------
known
I doubt weight loss will fix
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insulin_resistance](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insulin_resistance)

------
ivan_ah
Can someone recommend an exercise app?

I need something simple that will tell suggest random exercises and serve as a
timer, e.g. `say "do 20 push ups"; say "now do 30 sit-ups";` etc.

------
drivingmenuts
Hoora ... uh, I'm 6'5 and weigh 185. Houston, we have a small problem here.

~~~
Shebanator
See the comment from mhkool above. (specifically the part about fat in the
organs themselves, not the "functional medicine" part)

------
hyperchase
Losing 100 pounds and a ketogenic diet basically cured me. The main thing was
cutting out all refined carbohydrates from my diet, but I just feel better
when I replace nearly _all_ carbs with fats. Putting on some muscle in the
weightroom also made me substantially more insulin sensitive. My bloodwork has
never been better, and I'm off my bipolar medication. From what I've read,
it's most likely because of the slightly nootropic effect that ketones have on
the brain.

~~~
aantix
Is there any way to quickly induce ketosis?

~~~
itchyouch
Semi-strenuous exercise to deplete available glucose, immediately followed by
fasting.

Cardio works well for this. Options aren't limited to running. Speed walking
or slow walking at a 5-15% incline on a treadmill for some amount of time can
achieve the necessary glycogen depletion.

Consuming coconut milk as a fat source with its high level of medium chain
triglycerides also generates more ketones per fat ingested then other fat
sources

Since glycogen storage requires lots of water, losing 1-5lbs in water weight
after exercising is a good sign that the glycogen stores have been depleted
enough for the body to start looking for other sources of energy. One should
be able to hit the scale, go exercise and sweat a ton, then go back to the
scale 30mins to an hour later and see the water depletion. For myself I will
hit the treadmill walking at 15% incline @ 2-4mph for 45mins to an hour while
profusely sweating from the 3min mark till I stop.

~~~
DrScump
Low-intensity exercise uses free fatty acids, not glucose/glycogen, as its
primary fuel.

~~~
voidlogic
This is not a binary thing, as intensity increases the substrate gradually
shifts from FFAs to glucose. If one has been starving, fasting or eating very
low carb for a while, the muscles will also use ketone bodies in place of
glucose.

