My question is this:
The most likely category of people in this group are usually older people. I wonder what affect the aging process has on being able to stay in remission taking into account the need to keep the weight off.
I don’t think anyone has answered your question yet.
The likelihood of People developing Type 2 diabetes increases with age.
It used to be that most T2s were 60+
Now we are seeing people develop it in their 40s and 30s.
The main assumption that Professor Taylor makes with his research is that T2 is caused by having a fatty liver and a fatty pancreas, which is often signified by having a bit of extra weight around the middle. A thickening of the waist. His idea is that removing this fat from the organs will allow them to work properly again, and the type 2 diabetes goes into remission.
This works well for some people, but not all. If the individual doesn’t have a fatty liver, then no amount of calorie restriction will get rid of something that isn’t there. In my opinion, it is simply common sense to establish whether someone has a fatty liver before starting on a starvation diet lasting for months.
regarding age... I think this is very variable from person to person. As we get older, our whole body gets a little bit less efficient, doesn’t it? Hair, joints, digestion... it gets more difficult to stay fit and healthy, and adequate nutrition is increasingly important. We are now told we should eat more protein as we age.
So the older we are, the better nutrition we need, the more likely we are to develop T2, and the more difficult it is likely to be to achieve remission in the first place.
Another factor that Professor Taylor looks at in his studies is the length of time people had T2 before they achieved remission. I understand that while people with T2 in his studies did achieve remission at up to 10 years after diagnosis, it is much more likely to achieve remission is you have been T2 for a shorter time. The shorter the better.
keeping the weight off may look like an obvious solution to stay in remission, but with age, decreasing organ efficiency, decreasing muscle mass and so on, just keeping a low stable weight may not be enough to maintain remission indefinitely.
