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https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/12/151201141231.h...

A team from Newcastle University, UK, has shown that Type 2 diabetes is caused by fat accumulating in the pancreas -- and that losing less than one gram of that fat through weight loss reverses the diabetes. "So if you ask how much weight you need to lose to make your diabetes go away, the answer is one gram! But that gram needs to be fat from the pancreas. At present the only way we have to achieve this is by calorie restriction by any means -- whether by diet or an operation."

> there are severely underweight people (like my dad, who is literally skin and bones, and I mean concentration camp prisoner of war underweight where you see every rib from the back) who still somehow developed type 2 diabetes. So, there has to be a strong generic component to type 2 diabetes.

That may not have been T2DM. One of the things research has revealed over the past 30 or so years is that there are far more manifestations of diabetes than the old two-mode model though. Incidentally, that is one reason the types were renamed "Type 1" and "Type 2", to acknowledge that there are likely more types. There is a particular subtype known as Latent Autoimmune Diabetes in Adults (LADA), which some researchers have named "Type 1.5" because it shows signs of both T1DM and T2DM. It initially presents as T2DM, though, so people are often misdiagnosed at first. This manifestation has only been known for about 20 years, though, so it isn't surprising.

> Also, no one gets cured of diabetes type 2, you just control your blood glucose levels better and in effect alleviate the symptoms of diabetes, but you still have diabetes. If you think you don't, do a glucose tolerance test (i.e. drink a sweet drink and measure your blood glucose 1 hr later) and you will find that your glucose tolerance is still compromised no matter how well you managed to control your glucose levels by avoiding eating high glycemic food for life.

This is flat-out contradicted by Dr. Taylor's research. He is demonstrating that patients on a hypocaloric diet, either from bariatric surgery or just a medically-supervised diet, can (and in many cases do) regain normal glucose control after about 10% loss of body weight. I personally went from borderline diabetic to normal glucose control (I can pass an OGTT) after a four-month, 35lb weight loss. I changed nothing about my diet except amount of consumption.

> So, there has to be a strong generic component to type 2 diabetes.

Yep. The inheritance in families with monogenic diabetes and high incidence in certain ethnic groups make this pretty clear.

This is of course true, but it's also worth pointing out that your dad is by far the exception. Very few underweight people get T2.