Hacker News Reader

Comment by acangiano | Hacker News Reader

You absolutely don’t need such caloric restriction to revert diabetes. All it takes is a very low carb or keto diet. Even without exercise.

View on HN

Or certain types of plant-based diets[1][2][3].

1. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5466941/

2. https://www.omicsonline.org/open-access/diabetes-reversal-by...

3. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20425575

Problem is keeping it, as almost everyone can keep the diet for a few months. We all know what we should do but don't, sometimes until is too late.

The person that invents a pill to trick our genes not to seek what was once rare (fat, sweets, carbs etc) will be a trillionaire. When our current genes were stamped "we" maybe had to hunt for days to eat once. Now we drive to McDonalds, order our or open the fridge door. Maybe something that puts our metabolism on steroids?

Right, but still significantly easier than staying on an 800 calorie diet.

Many drugs that put our metabolitism on steroids cause deaths from overheating - the energy has to go somewhere.

At that calorie level it's basically a fast mimicking diet, so part of the benefit would be autophagy and the respawning of stem cells. It's hard to tell how much that helps however.

That’s definitely a factor. That and the automatic reduction in carb intake with such a caloric restriction. I mean, if they fed them pure sugar, they’d still be getting “only” 200g of carbs per day which is still less than what a lot of people who developed diabetes used to eat. More realistically they are likely getting significantly less carbs per day with elements of fasting thrown in.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com