DIABETES VICTORY: Type 2 Diabetes Can Be Reversed By Low Calorie Diet, Research Finds
A new research has suggested that when people consume 850 calories a day for three months, keeping the weight off can arrest type-2 diabetes for at least two years.
The findings have been described as “exciting” by the lead scientist. The study report, published in the Lancet Diabetes and Endocrinology journal, built on earlier work, which referred to weight loss as a key solution and offers more time off medication than previously thought, The Sun UK reports.
An investigator on the trial at Newcastle University, United Kingdom, Prof Roy Taylor, said,
“Type 2 diabetes is not a life sentence. We now know how people can return to normal despite developing this serious threat to health and happiness.
These results are a significant development and they finally pull down the curtain on the era of type-2 diabetes as an inevitably progressive disease.”
Researchers said that most of the weight-loss group whose diabetes had gone into remission had lost 10 kilogrammes or more and maintained this weight loss during the trial.
But Dr Nicola Guess, a researcher at King’s College London, said weight loss was not the whole story.
“Type-2 diabetes returned in a minority of people ( about 16 per cent) who kept off 15kg or more for two years. Further research is needed to help us understand why this is.
“It is possible that these people had type-2 diabetes for longer before losing weight or perhaps there might be dietary or genetic factors which contributed,” Guess said.
The charity, Diabetes UK, which funded the study, said the findings were exciting but added,
“We know type-2 diabetes is a complex condition and this approach will not work for everyone.”