Curing Diabetes with a Low Carb Diet | Hacker News Reader

Curing Diabetes with a Low Carb Diet

forbes.com

18 pointsabishekk926 comments

Type 2 diabetes is a lifestyle disease. Changes in lifestyle can reverse the disease. Coupled with early intensive insulin treatment, exercise and diet is __the known cure__ for T2. The current (pharmaceutical) standard of care in America is to subject the patient's body to further stress at the expense of vital organs.

> Type 2 diabetes is a lifestyle disease. Changes in lifestyle can reverse the disease.

Not so fast cowboy. Yes, diet and exercise can contribute to the disease, but some people can eat three doughnuts a day and not get DMT2, some get it despite a healthy lifestyle (including, if you believe the article, the CEO of this company, an ironman competitor).

And some of the damage is irreversible. Damage to pancreas, damage to circulatory system, etc. So catching it early (why they screen for "pre diabetes" and which is why the other company in the article went after pre diabetic patients). Once the patient has been diagnosed with full blown non-T1, then 100% reversal is probably not in the cards, simply a maintenance regime. For most people that includes drugs.

I agree with you without reservation that it's clear that you're better off on many dimensions by maintaining a healthy lifestyle, but like it or not (and I don't like it) that's hard for most people to maintain for many many reasons.

Also, "diabetes" describes a symptom (essentially excessive urination with sugar excreted in the urine"). Under "T2" (basically: anything which isn't your immune system attacking your beta cells) are a cluster of diseases which cause the same symptoms.

genetics plays a big part in type-2. I know several athletic types who have type-2 (through inheritance)

I didn't read the story because of addblock but I've seen headlines like this before. As someone with type 2 they always annoy me. I've been eating low carb for a long time (sometimes more successfully than others) and while I can keep my blood sugars under control with the diet, and hopefully keep my body from further damage, I have not "cured" my diabetes. If I eat a high carb meal, my blood sugar will shoot up way higher than that of a normal person. I still have diabetes. Eating low carb is not curing me, but it is helping me keep things under reasonable control.

I've recently been diagnosed with type 2 (a few months ago), and have noticed significant benefit from a low carb diet, just as you state. I'm curious if you've looked into intermittent fasting as a method of trying to reverse type 2 as well.

The general gist is that it gives your pancreas some "time off" from having to manage blood sugar increases due to daily ingestion of food, hopefully allowing it some time to "heal". I've started this and have noticed a small bit of improvement in my blood glucose levels, both on the fasting day and for a few days on the non-fasting days. I've been fasting one day in six.

I'm skeptical of this actually "reversing" the disease, but it does seem to help my numbers, as well as helping me lose a small amount of weight. It also reacquaints me with hunger, and makes it easier on the non-fasting days not to succumb to non-hunger related eating cues, at least in my experience.

Interesting you mention the idea of fasting. I'm learning more about it now. My roommate, who is not diabetic but interested in low-carb anyway, has been investigating this for a while and has brought it to my attention. Any tool I can add to the toolbox is worth considering.

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