I also came back here to check in on him (and read about the news here which is IMO the main reason to drop in).
He's not the only proven case of type 1 full remission:
https://www.diabetes.co.uk/news/201...-of-adults-with-type-1-diabetes-99607766.html
There were a couple more decades ago, that had nothing to do with ultra-marathon running. I suspect all these cases are flukes and not generally applicable to the general population. There are tons of type 1s on low carb diets, even no-carb diets, and aside from a couple honeymoon cases being insulin free, that doesn't mean they'll stay off the needle forever nor does it mean low-carbing in and of itself is a cure.
As much as we'd all love that to be the case, this isn't like Type 2 where if you lose enough weight and eat low-carb you go into full, permanent, clinical remission (unless you gain the weight again so the disease comes back, but in the meanwhile, yes, it is 100% gone. Normal blood sugars w/o drugs = not diabetic, by definition).
I've been doing low-carbing, even extreme fasting mimicking diets for a whole week (a dozen times) in various forms now for the past ten years and if anything, my c-peptides have gone down instead of up. Beating this disease is very, very tough. The highest I've ever gotten my c-peptides was on GLP-1 and eating one meal a day, about half of a normal healthy person's minimum level (0.51 ng/dl).
Put it this way, even if ultra-marathon running were one possible way to reverse your type 1, the fact that only one man in the history of the human race as ever done so (with independently corroborated scientific proof of the claim, not wild internet BS), despite the fact that you hear of quite a few distance runners with type 1 and even olympic athletes with the condition, tells me that extreme exercise is probably not the solution. Also for every Dan Darkes out there (n=1), there are probably thousands who've led themselves to an early grave by pushing their bodies past their capacity and wound up in trouble due to a hypo in a remote place. Some type 1s even go mountain climbing w/o gear. I climbed modest mountain once w/ my cousin (a GP) and had to rest half way up with a hypo. Luckily I had plenty of sugar pills but I was shaking so bad I nearly fell off the cliff. If I were a cat, I'd certainly have more than nine lives. Or at least nine diabetic lives. It's amazing that I'm still alive with all the crazy stuff I've done in my life. Running ultra-marathons seems like a foolish risk given the chances of hospitalization are likely far greater than the chances of spontaneous remission like Dan Darkes. What I'm more hopeful for is that doctors can analyze his body and try to replicate what happened there in a pill form, so the rest of us can benefit from his sacrifice and hard work.
I wish him all the best but can't help but feel that one day, he'll have a sore knee or leg for a few months and when he stops running, his type 1 will come right back. I cross my fingers he can stay off the scag forever. He's like the lone cow that jumped off the conveyor belt in the slaughter house, and we're all watching him on his way to freedom, wishing we were him but knowing better. (at least some of us, who are not in denial).