Dan Darkes, Type 1 Diabetes Reversal
- Thread starter Daniel Darkes
- Start Date
thak you for your answer, 0.97NG/ML equals to 32nmol/L. The range is also important, so depending where your lab has it range for example my lab has it´s range from 0.13 - 0.87 and sometimes 0.21 - 1.05. So if we say your is the latter, yours would be 0.32 that is 11 points from bottom range, so quit low but maybe gooing upwards as your betacells apparantly are proliferating. Hopefully this will happen to some of us in the future 
....Best of wishes for the future....
....Best of wishes for the future....
- Messages
- 33
- Type of diabetes
- Type 1
- Treatment type
- Other
That's ok, it's low but its in range for a normal person , I will update you on future teststhak you for your answer, 0.97NG/ML equals to 32nmol/L. The range is also important, so depending where your lab has it range for example my lab has it´s range from 0.13 - 0.87 and sometimes 0.21 - 1.05. So if we say your is the latter, yours would be 0.32 that is 11 points from bottom range, so quit low but maybe gooing upwards as your betacells apparantly are proliferating. Hopefully this will happen to some of us in the future
Hello Dan,
very interesting to read your story. I only read the daily mail story, which is probably not the most reliable of stories, but I'm interested in a sentence there about your brain starting to send signals to your pancreas.
I'm wondering, I can't imagine you didn't, but did you use either freestyle libre, or another cgm system?
I've had freestyle libre for just over 3 months now, and I'm sort of intrigued how the longer I have it, the less variation there is in my daily patterns graph, as the variation in blood sugars over a 7 day period seems to converge more.So the grey outline around the median blood sugars grows smaller, and smaller.
I'm wondering if you were tightly controlled, and that that might have impacted on the ability of your blood glucose regulation system to start working again. In that the signals sent to your brain might have been closer to normal blood sugar levels.
It must be very confusing for the body's blood regulation system, if the blood sugars vary very widely.
It's just it's such new technology, and very exciting, and it would be interesting to know if that also played a part in your recovery.
very interesting to read your story. I only read the daily mail story, which is probably not the most reliable of stories, but I'm interested in a sentence there about your brain starting to send signals to your pancreas.
I'm wondering, I can't imagine you didn't, but did you use either freestyle libre, or another cgm system?
I've had freestyle libre for just over 3 months now, and I'm sort of intrigued how the longer I have it, the less variation there is in my daily patterns graph, as the variation in blood sugars over a 7 day period seems to converge more.So the grey outline around the median blood sugars grows smaller, and smaller.
I'm wondering if you were tightly controlled, and that that might have impacted on the ability of your blood glucose regulation system to start working again. In that the signals sent to your brain might have been closer to normal blood sugar levels.
It must be very confusing for the body's blood regulation system, if the blood sugars vary very widely.
It's just it's such new technology, and very exciting, and it would be interesting to know if that also played a part in your recovery.
- Messages
- 33
- Type of diabetes
- Type 1
- Treatment type
- Other
Hi there, I've been using the The Abbott Care Freestyle Lite BGM, if this is what your question is related to, it's a great bit of kit, and gives accurate readings
Hi Dan, just logged in here to say thanks for giving us all hope. Great work on the running, your story helped me get back on the treadmill. I love how running improves insulin sensitivity and calmness, but don't run outside out of fear of hypos.
I have a few questions if you don't mind.
1) I read in one news report about your case that your doctor reduced your insulin-to-carb ratio due to you gradually having more hypos as your endogenous insulin production grew, thereby making the exogenous insulin superfluous and overkill. With a CGM, you must have noticed on your own that your ratio was changing over time? Every time I get a hypo I ask myself, did I over-correct and if so, was it because I mis-calculated the calories / carbs in the meal or is my insulin sensitivity getting better? Or insulin production. My c-peptides have risen and fallen over the years, still in the low range but if I were super-fit I think I could cut down my insulin requirements even further.
2) Long-distance running (longer than 1 hour) seems dangerous for type 1s due to not only hypos, but hyperglycemia too (from adrenalin). How did you avoid hypos/hypers during long-distance running? Did you have a CGM the entire time you were a long-distance runner, or only recently? I have often had perfectly normal sugars at the start of a run and at the end it was stratospheric. Do you under-dose your insulin dose estimates before a run to avoid hypos? I would be very scared of doing taking a "normal" amount of insulin for a high carb meal prior to a workout, out of fear.
Typically I'd much rather have a hyper during exercise than a hypo, but hypers can be very uncomfortable too. I only ask this because it seems that you do eat a decent amount of carbs before runs based on your posts. I've also read other testimonials from type 1 athletes that insulin sensitivity changes drastically mid-workout, after about a 1/2 hour, making it even harder to predict how much "insulin on board" to have depending on how many KM you are running. Did you figure out any rules of thumb for how much insulin to take, given variable insulin sensitivity?
3) How many net carbs do you eat per day, on average? (While you were still low-ceptide). You didn't mention specifically. Do you consider your diet to be generally low carb, and just inject more insulin during "carb days"? Or are you consistently high carb and just very well controlled? The most dangerous thing for me to do in my experience is load up on carbs, then take a big shot, then go exercising. That, for me, is a recipe for disaster due to the variable nature of insulin sensitivity I mentioned.
----
I also see some comments here about type 1 generally that are out of date with what I've read in the past couple years and give me hope. First, virtually type 1s have some residual insulin production, even if it is very, very low. Autoimmunity doesn't kill off all beta cells apparently, and after seven years of honeymoon things more or less stabilize and the beta cells that are left are split into two categories: ones that are functional and healthy, and ones that are immature and not fully functional. In other words neither capable of detecting blood sugar nor doing anything about it, such as signalling to alpha cells to stop releasing sugar, in the presence of high blood sugar (via serotonin), or conversely to stop releasing insulin and simply allow alpha cells to tell the liver to dump what glucose stores it has in the presence of low blood sugars.
4) Did you notice your mid-run hypo frequency and severity diminishing over time? More working beta cells should mean more functional alpha-beta cell intercommunication, in order to counter hypoglycemia via glucose-mediated glucagon release.
One more thing, and I wanted your opinion on this, Dan, because surely you've spoken to many experts now, is whether type 1 is indeed still considered an "auto-immune" malfunction or simply damaged beta cells creating junk proteins which is are then targetted, by a functional immune system reacting correctly by destroying damaged cells (akin to cancer).
So in this case, would it not be possible to reverse type 1 diabetes with the immune system one already has, via extreme exercise, similar to yours?
I know there are lots of examples of type 1 Olympic athletes and a few other extreme runners like you, but no one else has had their diabetes reversed in this way. Yet.
However famous example of a woman with type 1 who did go into remission after being incarcerated and not given any insulin (due to negligence).
So my question is,:do you think injected, exogenous insulin could be a detriment to recovery of endogenous insulin production? I wonder if it's possible to follow in your footsteps here. I've managed to raise my CP to around half of what you have (0.49 ng/ml, my antibodies are +ve but pretty low at this point), through a combination of drugs (see my blog) and low-carbing and running, but mostly drugs (BCG, verapamil, GLP-1, having all been recently proven to either lower A1C or boost c-peptides in type 1 diabetics, see the News section of this site for more info), so I wonder if I could make it the rest of the way out by going extreme with my running regimen and diet as you have.
What do you think? Is it crazy for others to follow in your footsteps, given it's unlikely we have your "magic gene?" I've got a script for a Freestyle Libre now but no insurance for it, but I might just pay out of pocket if you think it's the best and only way to be able to run for hours at a time without hypos or hypers getting in the way.
I have a few questions if you don't mind.
1) I read in one news report about your case that your doctor reduced your insulin-to-carb ratio due to you gradually having more hypos as your endogenous insulin production grew, thereby making the exogenous insulin superfluous and overkill. With a CGM, you must have noticed on your own that your ratio was changing over time? Every time I get a hypo I ask myself, did I over-correct and if so, was it because I mis-calculated the calories / carbs in the meal or is my insulin sensitivity getting better? Or insulin production. My c-peptides have risen and fallen over the years, still in the low range but if I were super-fit I think I could cut down my insulin requirements even further.
2) Long-distance running (longer than 1 hour) seems dangerous for type 1s due to not only hypos, but hyperglycemia too (from adrenalin). How did you avoid hypos/hypers during long-distance running? Did you have a CGM the entire time you were a long-distance runner, or only recently? I have often had perfectly normal sugars at the start of a run and at the end it was stratospheric. Do you under-dose your insulin dose estimates before a run to avoid hypos? I would be very scared of doing taking a "normal" amount of insulin for a high carb meal prior to a workout, out of fear.
Typically I'd much rather have a hyper during exercise than a hypo, but hypers can be very uncomfortable too. I only ask this because it seems that you do eat a decent amount of carbs before runs based on your posts. I've also read other testimonials from type 1 athletes that insulin sensitivity changes drastically mid-workout, after about a 1/2 hour, making it even harder to predict how much "insulin on board" to have depending on how many KM you are running. Did you figure out any rules of thumb for how much insulin to take, given variable insulin sensitivity?
3) How many net carbs do you eat per day, on average? (While you were still low-ceptide). You didn't mention specifically. Do you consider your diet to be generally low carb, and just inject more insulin during "carb days"? Or are you consistently high carb and just very well controlled? The most dangerous thing for me to do in my experience is load up on carbs, then take a big shot, then go exercising. That, for me, is a recipe for disaster due to the variable nature of insulin sensitivity I mentioned.
----
I also see some comments here about type 1 generally that are out of date with what I've read in the past couple years and give me hope. First, virtually type 1s have some residual insulin production, even if it is very, very low. Autoimmunity doesn't kill off all beta cells apparently, and after seven years of honeymoon things more or less stabilize and the beta cells that are left are split into two categories: ones that are functional and healthy, and ones that are immature and not fully functional. In other words neither capable of detecting blood sugar nor doing anything about it, such as signalling to alpha cells to stop releasing sugar, in the presence of high blood sugar (via serotonin), or conversely to stop releasing insulin and simply allow alpha cells to tell the liver to dump what glucose stores it has in the presence of low blood sugars.
4) Did you notice your mid-run hypo frequency and severity diminishing over time? More working beta cells should mean more functional alpha-beta cell intercommunication, in order to counter hypoglycemia via glucose-mediated glucagon release.
One more thing, and I wanted your opinion on this, Dan, because surely you've spoken to many experts now, is whether type 1 is indeed still considered an "auto-immune" malfunction or simply damaged beta cells creating junk proteins which is are then targetted, by a functional immune system reacting correctly by destroying damaged cells (akin to cancer).
So in this case, would it not be possible to reverse type 1 diabetes with the immune system one already has, via extreme exercise, similar to yours?
I know there are lots of examples of type 1 Olympic athletes and a few other extreme runners like you, but no one else has had their diabetes reversed in this way. Yet.
However famous example of a woman with type 1 who did go into remission after being incarcerated and not given any insulin (due to negligence).
So my question is,:do you think injected, exogenous insulin could be a detriment to recovery of endogenous insulin production? I wonder if it's possible to follow in your footsteps here. I've managed to raise my CP to around half of what you have (0.49 ng/ml, my antibodies are +ve but pretty low at this point), through a combination of drugs (see my blog) and low-carbing and running, but mostly drugs (BCG, verapamil, GLP-1, having all been recently proven to either lower A1C or boost c-peptides in type 1 diabetics, see the News section of this site for more info), so I wonder if I could make it the rest of the way out by going extreme with my running regimen and diet as you have.
What do you think? Is it crazy for others to follow in your footsteps, given it's unlikely we have your "magic gene?" I've got a script for a Freestyle Libre now but no insurance for it, but I might just pay out of pocket if you think it's the best and only way to be able to run for hours at a time without hypos or hypers getting in the way.
- Messages
- 33
- Type of diabetes
- Type 1
- Treatment type
- Other
Hi, good questions!
Running is something I've done for years, even before I was diagnosed with diabetes, I started off short distances, then only the last 6 years or so I've gradually built it to long ultra distances, for me I feel like my body adapted to these long distances going and taking my body to its limits, I checked my blood sugar levels before I ran, so I knew what zone to be in, I take food supplements, and gels with me, I would always take something every sort of hour, so I wouldn't have a hypo on runs, my sugar would drop on my ultra runs, but I sort of know in my mind when I need energy, sometimes my long ultra runs would last 10,11 or 12 hours! Long time, so I'm taking on more food or energy, personally running is good for type 1 diabetes, with my carb eating I'd make sure I'd have I high carb meal the night before , always
Thanks for detailed response, you're my hero btw.
Every time I run on the treadmill even for a 1/2 hour I feel like a million bucks afterwards. I used to run 1 hour per day (outside) but fear of hypos caused me to switch to running at the gym. Then eventually I would get super high sugars after a long fast run due to adrenalin and then I'd take a big shot of insulin, resulting in an over-correction and nasty night-time hypos which can be terrifying. But that's all human error, of course. And if I had a CGM I think I'd do much better.
If you're ingesting calories mid-run, are you also taking insulin? I presume so. Do you stop running for the duration it takes or do you have a system to jab without stopping?
I have a feeling that it wasn't your "special gene" but just the ultra-long running that got you off insulin injections. Your CP levels are barely on the low end of normal, so I suspect if you stopped running you'd be back on insulin at some point. 0.94 ng/ml isn't enough on its own to counter a very sugar or carb-heavy meal unless your insulin sensitivity is extremely high, which is thanks to running surely. There are type 1s on my blog who've posted higher C-peptide readings than yours, although some of them are honeymooners. (< 7 years since diagnosis). My max was, as I said, around 0.49, and if I'd been very thin and on a strict ketogenic diet at the time plus running, I think that would be enough to get by with only a few units of insulin per day, here and there.
There are other extreme runners who are type 1s who never got off the jab, but there are other variables like diet and antibody levels. I read that after many years with type 1s, most see their antibody levels dropping (as you age your immune system gets weaker too thus auto-immunity gets reduced as well as a consequence). This is true to Crohn's as well, I have a friend with it who says as she got older the symptoms improved. Also you got diagnosed at a relatively older age, not sure how that fits in either.
Interesting you take zinc pills on top of vitamin c and d. I have taken all those supplements before but I'm going back on them now. The Zinc vs type 1 diabetes connection has been made in several research studies as well. Something to do with countries and areas with high zinc content in the water supply have a much lower incidence of type 1 diabetes cases. Same for southern equatorial countries, practically no cases of type 1, as they get more natural sunlight thus have higher levels of vitamin D which protects against type 1 as well.
Every time I run on the treadmill even for a 1/2 hour I feel like a million bucks afterwards. I used to run 1 hour per day (outside) but fear of hypos caused me to switch to running at the gym. Then eventually I would get super high sugars after a long fast run due to adrenalin and then I'd take a big shot of insulin, resulting in an over-correction and nasty night-time hypos which can be terrifying. But that's all human error, of course. And if I had a CGM I think I'd do much better.
If you're ingesting calories mid-run, are you also taking insulin? I presume so. Do you stop running for the duration it takes or do you have a system to jab without stopping?
I have a feeling that it wasn't your "special gene" but just the ultra-long running that got you off insulin injections. Your CP levels are barely on the low end of normal, so I suspect if you stopped running you'd be back on insulin at some point. 0.94 ng/ml isn't enough on its own to counter a very sugar or carb-heavy meal unless your insulin sensitivity is extremely high, which is thanks to running surely. There are type 1s on my blog who've posted higher C-peptide readings than yours, although some of them are honeymooners. (< 7 years since diagnosis). My max was, as I said, around 0.49, and if I'd been very thin and on a strict ketogenic diet at the time plus running, I think that would be enough to get by with only a few units of insulin per day, here and there.
There are other extreme runners who are type 1s who never got off the jab, but there are other variables like diet and antibody levels. I read that after many years with type 1s, most see their antibody levels dropping (as you age your immune system gets weaker too thus auto-immunity gets reduced as well as a consequence). This is true to Crohn's as well, I have a friend with it who says as she got older the symptoms improved. Also you got diagnosed at a relatively older age, not sure how that fits in either.
Interesting you take zinc pills on top of vitamin c and d. I have taken all those supplements before but I'm going back on them now. The Zinc vs type 1 diabetes connection has been made in several research studies as well. Something to do with countries and areas with high zinc content in the water supply have a much lower incidence of type 1 diabetes cases. Same for southern equatorial countries, practically no cases of type 1, as they get more natural sunlight thus have higher levels of vitamin D which protects against type 1 as well.
- Messages
- 33
- Type of diabetes
- Type 1
- Treatment type
- Other
When I go out on a long run, I wouldn't take insulin, I never have, I would go out on knowing I'm fueled up and plenty of energy, on long distance runs, especially runs over 25 miles, my blood sugar would always be going down and not up, so roughly every 6 or 7 miles I would be taking small amounts of food on board, or even a gel, or sweets.
For the last few months, I've only been doing short distance, so nothing really above 15 miles, and still my blood sugar, is at a great response, so I think the running I do helps dramatically, but isn't the reason why I'm not injecting, the gene I carry, which is still being analysed and researched , I think is the main talk here,
Regards to Zink, I've taken it for a few years now, along with vitamin D, it all helps towards this, especially type 1s
Can you tell us how many IUs you take of Zinc and Vitamins C+D3 daily? I want to mimick you as precisely as possible.
Interesting that you don't jab insulin during runs, that makes sense but maybe my own experience with elevated sugars after 1-hour duration runs is simply the result of something I ate or drank before, so again, human error. I have gotten to the point, with fasting, of completely depleting glycogen stores and being in such a state results in virtually no dawn phenomenon so would likely also be conducive to not getting hypers during a short run.
I also wonder if your carb ingestion the day before a long run is perhaps helpful other than just having direct sugar-based fuel for the run, but also to stimulate c-peptide growth. There was a study showing that beta cells replicate in the presence of elevated blood sugar, as they would need to in order to bring sugars down, at least in a healthy person.
In terms of your immune system being rebooted, I've heard of some leukemia patients getting bone marrow transplants to get a different person's immune system installed in their bodies. I'm no expert in that type of thing but I hope researchers are looking into all possibilities. If antibodies being negative is a prerequisite for running helping jolt the system back, then I wonder why more type 1s don't spontaneously heal out of the condition (given that beta cell neogenesis and replication are present throughout ones' lifetime even for type 1s). I think running extra long distances is the key here.
I'm definitely going to boost my zinc and supplements, stack the odds in my favour.
Interesting that you don't jab insulin during runs, that makes sense but maybe my own experience with elevated sugars after 1-hour duration runs is simply the result of something I ate or drank before, so again, human error. I have gotten to the point, with fasting, of completely depleting glycogen stores and being in such a state results in virtually no dawn phenomenon so would likely also be conducive to not getting hypers during a short run.
I also wonder if your carb ingestion the day before a long run is perhaps helpful other than just having direct sugar-based fuel for the run, but also to stimulate c-peptide growth. There was a study showing that beta cells replicate in the presence of elevated blood sugar, as they would need to in order to bring sugars down, at least in a healthy person.
In terms of your immune system being rebooted, I've heard of some leukemia patients getting bone marrow transplants to get a different person's immune system installed in their bodies. I'm no expert in that type of thing but I hope researchers are looking into all possibilities. If antibodies being negative is a prerequisite for running helping jolt the system back, then I wonder why more type 1s don't spontaneously heal out of the condition (given that beta cell neogenesis and replication are present throughout ones' lifetime even for type 1s). I think running extra long distances is the key here.
I'm definitely going to boost my zinc and supplements, stack the odds in my favour.
- Messages
- 14,298
- Type of diabetes
- I reversed my Type 2
- Treatment type
- Diet only
@Hoping4Cure - There are a decent number of T1 runners around. One I think of, off the top of my head is Dr Ian Lake, who is also a medical general practitioner, so has a decent grasp of both living with T1, plus the physiological impacts of exercise on his body.
Dr Lake routinely eats keto, and wears a CGM.
Of course, you should be managing yourself to remain safe, but if you were enjoying your road running, it could be worth some perseverence.
Dr Lake routinely eats keto, and wears a CGM.
Of course, you should be managing yourself to remain safe, but if you were enjoying your road running, it could be worth some perseverence.
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- Messages
- 33
- Type of diabetes
- Type 1
- Treatment type
- Other
So I take 16mg of Zink daily, tablet form
10ug VIT B12
Vitamin D ultra 25ug daily
This is all consisted with my diet daily, we all get vit D, from sunlight, especially running long distance, a evening before a long run, il up my carbs, and protein
Dan
Dan, you wrote on the first page you take vitamin C as well, how much?
There's also the POSEIDON study mentioned in the news section here an Omega-3 + D3 study to try and halt the auto-immunity during onset. This is my big hope, that it should be possible to reverse established type 1s' autoimmunity as you have done, in ways other than having a "miracle gene", but just by tapping in to various factors that mitigate it. I've got a huge box of supplements including omega-3 so I'm going back on that too.
I will try to get the exact doses of D3 and Omega 3 from the study once it shows up on sci hub (no money to pay for articles any more) and share them with anyone else interested. I think the doses are probably much higher than the norm, possibly even into the "no one is really sure if this is safe" zone. I of course want to be safe, but it's important to know what that number is. For some vitamins, they don't actually know what the cutoff point is, for sure.
ps, also, Dan, have you ever tried 16-8 or alternate day fasting or FMD by any chance?
I had a rough go with FMD last year, it totally wrecked my insulin sensitivity for a time. Then again I wasn't running or exercising while doing that. The point was to try and stimulate beta cell regeneration, and even immune system modulation / rebooting, but I think I only proved that starving myself is great for sugar readings during fasting and that gorging at the end during refeeding phase is counterproductive. My c-peptides were much higher when I was just eating normal low carb and taking GLP-1 and such. (btw, to anyone else out there, Ozempic is AWESOME, even at the lowest dose. my endo's nurse gave me a few pens to try it out and it's much better than Victoza and Trulicity, my sugar readings are really good now even w/ 0.25mg / week dose, which I'm taking to stretch out my samples as long as possible. No official drug insurance coverage for that as a type 1 sadly).
Ok I'm off for a run!
There's also the POSEIDON study mentioned in the news section here an Omega-3 + D3 study to try and halt the auto-immunity during onset. This is my big hope, that it should be possible to reverse established type 1s' autoimmunity as you have done, in ways other than having a "miracle gene", but just by tapping in to various factors that mitigate it. I've got a huge box of supplements including omega-3 so I'm going back on that too.
I will try to get the exact doses of D3 and Omega 3 from the study once it shows up on sci hub (no money to pay for articles any more) and share them with anyone else interested. I think the doses are probably much higher than the norm, possibly even into the "no one is really sure if this is safe" zone. I of course want to be safe, but it's important to know what that number is. For some vitamins, they don't actually know what the cutoff point is, for sure.
ps, also, Dan, have you ever tried 16-8 or alternate day fasting or FMD by any chance?
I had a rough go with FMD last year, it totally wrecked my insulin sensitivity for a time. Then again I wasn't running or exercising while doing that. The point was to try and stimulate beta cell regeneration, and even immune system modulation / rebooting, but I think I only proved that starving myself is great for sugar readings during fasting and that gorging at the end during refeeding phase is counterproductive. My c-peptides were much higher when I was just eating normal low carb and taking GLP-1 and such. (btw, to anyone else out there, Ozempic is AWESOME, even at the lowest dose. my endo's nurse gave me a few pens to try it out and it's much better than Victoza and Trulicity, my sugar readings are really good now even w/ 0.25mg / week dose, which I'm taking to stretch out my samples as long as possible. No official drug insurance coverage for that as a type 1 sadly).
Ok I'm off for a run!
- Messages
- 33
- Type of diabetes
- Type 1
- Treatment type
- Other
Hi, vitimin C, I take only 200mg
Omega 3, 1000mg tablet form aswell Daily, generally you can get alot these from good solid diet of oily fish, fruits aswell, it's good to top up. Just a quick one aswell, I don't no how experience running you have , or you have just started out running, build the miles slowly, get to know your body, check your blood when you can, take on sugar or carbs if you need to or adapt the insulin
Going out long distance runs, is challenging! All the best
I may have missed it, you said you were running a lot before getting type1, but at what point did you change your diet. (I assume in the army you had the food they provided)
- Messages
- 33
- Type of diabetes
- Type 1
- Treatment type
- Other
Hi there, my diet in the army was normal, as I didn't have type 1, then so I was eating what ever was dished up lol, I was soon burning it off, training, I was running alot in the army, and in my spare time in the evenings. It wasn't till I left the army I was running longer ultra distances.
I was diagnosed with type 1, 4 weeks after I left the army
- Messages
- 33
- Type of diabetes
- Type 1
- Treatment type
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dunelm
Master
- Messages
- 11,417
- Type of diabetes
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